Light Vehicle Forecast

Since January, Mexico has been able to import American and Canadian vehicles that are Model Year (MY) 2007 or older. Up until December, the limit was MY04 or older and in 2009, it was MY99 or older. In 2019, any used vehicle can be imported from the U.S. and Canada, regardless of its age. This is not a new problem: in 2006 and 2007, Mexico imported more used vehicles then it sold new cars.

Although the imports cooled down last year, they gained strength again earlier in 2013. There was an average...

Mainstream large cars, such as the Avalon, Maxima, Taurus and Impala, continue to lose favor. Their combined share of the U.S. market has retreated from 5.8% in 2008 to just 3.5% in 2012 (the results were similar this past January, with the large car share declining from 4.1% a year ago to 3.9% this year). Large cars now account for a smaller slice of the U.S. market than minivans, itself an endangered species. And the number of large cars continues to decline, down from 14 in 2008 to 7 now....

Venezuela was all over the news last week because of the death of its president, Hugo Chávez. President Chávez passed away after a battle against cancer, which included several surgeries in Cuba. What the international media did not pay attention is to a law approved in January that affects the automotive industry.

How would you react if a law determined that all new vehicles from now on should have a sticker price from the first half of 2009? Moreover, could you, the dealer network, afford to...

January 2013 U.S. new light vehicle sales climbed 14% from a year ago and sales for the rest of the year are expected to climb as well, though at a more modest rate. There are several drivers of this growth, both at the macroeconomic level and within the industry itself. Consider the following:

• Interest rates remain exceptionally low, and with the Fed promising to keep them there until unemployment declines to 6.5%, we can expect to see low rates for quite awhile. This means that OEMs and dealers...

The next 18 months are important for all OEMs, but perhaps more so for GM than for any of its rivals. From mid-2012 through mid-2014, GM will unveil the greatest array of all-new or re-designed vehicles in recent memory, if not in the company's history.

In 2012, the company brought to market the Spark minicar, Malibu midsize sedan, Verano compact car, XTS large luxury car and the ATS compact luxury car. Coming in 2013 are new versions of the Silverado and Sierra large pickups, the full-size...

South America is a very diverse continent. Brazil, its main country, forbids diesel passenger cars and speaks Portuguese, but is surrounded by Spanish speaking countries. French Guiana still belongs to France, something not very common nowadays. Consumer behavior is also different: Toyota, for example, is the market leader in Peru and has a higher share in the countries closer to the Pacific Ocean, while customer loyalty in Brazil and Argentina goes toward brands from Europe and the United...

Many of you may be returning to work this week after an extended vacation around the holiday season. Welcome back! I'll keep this blog short and informative.

It's 2013 and the world didn't end last month as the Mayans (supposedly) predicted. Given this, we can officially remove Mayan prognosticators from the category of a legitimate forecasting entity. However, Polk has a few predictions. They go something like this: 

1. New auto sales for 2013 will jump 6.6 percent over last year. Our U.S....

Late in June, Argentina canceled the free-trade agreement it has had with Mexico since 2002 (as noted in my prior blog). Argentina wanted to negotiate the agreement, as Brazil successfully did with Mexico, assigning quotas to imports but Mexico did not concede. Argentina has been consistently the fifth main market for Mexican exports since 2009, although volumes jumped 177% between 2009 and 2011. Brazil went from the fourth spot in 2009 up to second place this year, even with limits to imports...

Welcome to a series of blog posts about the global automotive market based on a paper that I recently worked on with a set of colleagues that discusses important strategic questions for automotive business planners. For those of you interested in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), this blog focuses on the question, "Will BRIC countries continue to drive organic growth in the automotive industry?"

Answer: Yes!

Why? Of the 38 percent jump Polk expects to see for global light...

The sales and registration data speak for themselves regarding the success of the Prius. Its sales more than doubled in September, and are up 92% through nine months. However, because three new derivatives of the Prius have come to market in 2012 (the tall 'V' version, the plug-in version and the smaller 'C' version), comparing this year with last is not comparing apples to apples.

But even when you pull out the 2012 deliveries of these three derivatives and look just at the original Prius, its...

It was a national holiday in Brazil on October 12 and I went with my family to where my father was born, a small town where approximately 10,000 people live today. During the long weekend, my impression was that Chevrolet was the best seller in Brazil, but actually it falls behind Fiat and Volkswagen. However, I saw more of the Chevrolet Montana (a pick-up truck based on a passenger car, something that Brazil created decades ago) and the S-10 (the local name of the Colorado) than the Fiat Strada...

We hear all the time about the troubled U.S. economy. If it isn’t high unemployment, it's the sluggish GDP or a decline in manufacturing or something else. But, there is also frequent mention in the media about the positive trends in the car business. Car and light truck sales are up, the manufacturers are turning in hefty – sometimes record – profits and even adding jobs to keep up with strong demand. There seems to be a disconnect here. How could the car business be doing so well while the...

At this point in automotive history, nobody denies the importance of Hyundai. According to Polk data, the Korean OEM produced almost 3 million light vehicles worldwide in 2003 and we forecast that its output will reach 8.3 million in 2016. That's a growth of 183%, while on the other hand, GM's production is rather stable during the same period.

Part of this growth will come from a brand new factory in Brazil. With an investment of $600 million, Hyundai will start producing a hatchback on...

There is a lot of buzz about the Audi plant that will be built in San José Chiapa, Mexico. The press refers to it as "Audi's first car plant in the Americas," but this is not correct. Audi produced the A3 in São José dos Pinhais, Brazil between 1999 and 2006, in a factory now totally owned by Audi's parent company, Volkswagen. Golf (still in its fourth generation), Fox and SpaceFox are produced there. It was a joint venture between Audi and Volkswagen – Audi had 25% of the factory.

The A3 brought...

If you live in the Detroit metropolitan area, you may have noticed that almost every other car on the road seems to be a Ford Fusion or Chevrolet Malibu (if you're on one of the coasts, the same could be said of the Camry or Accord). In fact, there is a boom in sales of midsize cars. In the first six months of this year, 18% of all new vehicle sales have been non-luxury midsize cars. This is more than two points higher than the number two segment (non-luxury compact cars) and the first time in...

My global colleagues just prepared a brief analysis of the car market in Japan. While 2012 is certainly better than last year's struggle, the outlook for 2013 and beyond will be an uphill climb.

For you crystal-ball gazers, here are four automotive forecast views that Polk has about the Japanese auto market:

1. In 2011, Japan sold 3.5 million new cars and for comparison's sake, during the first half of 2012, new car sales rose by 57 percent compared to the first half of 2011.
    
2. For the full-year 2012,...

As the July sales numbers were released, Ford and GM made the headlines for their drop, while Chrysler still enjoys its momentum. But Ford’s challenges are not only in the U.S. – and I am not talking about Europe. In Brazil, where the market enjoyed a 22% growth in July, Ford sold 12% less light vehicles compared to June. Its monthly market share slumped to 8.44% from 9.90% in the previous month.

Ford, the first OEM to be established in Brazil (1919), has always faced challenges in Latin...

In an eastern province of Paraguay, more than 300 police officers tried to evict 150 landless farmers from an estate owned by a political opponent of Fernando Lugo, the Paraguayan president. Six police officers and 11 farmers died. One week later, the Senate voted to impeach Mr. Lugo for his “poor performance” during the forced eviction. He was immediately replaced by the Vice President, Federico Franco, who will be in charge of the 6.3 million person country until next August, when Mr. Lugo's...

A list of GM's woes would undoubtedly include the European market, but right now GM is also struggling in the U.S. Through the first six months of 2012, the company's U.S. market share is down almost two percentage points to just 18.1%. The GM brand suffering the greatest decline, in both market share (-25%) and sales (-18%), is Cadillac. 

Yet, even though this is not good news for GM's flagship brand, it is not a surprise. During GM's restructuring in 2009, product programs were delayed or even...

The Polk forecasting team is in a position to report good news as the North American assembly and sales volumes continue to improve year over year. This is the direct result of modest economic improvement and the satisfaction of pent-up demand. Polk anticipates North American assembly volumes will increase by 10% (14.4 M) in 2012, following a 10% increase in 2011 (13.1 M) and a 39% increase in 2010 (12M), following a dreadful fall to 8.6 million units in 2009.

However, there is at least one fly...