New-car sales in 2008

The other day, I found the last year’s new car sales ranking in the newspaper. It has been sluggish for a while but Toyota Prius, alleged to have high fuel performance was ranked in 5th, which was the first time it ranked in the top 10 since it went on the market in 1997.

Toyota sold 73,110 Prius, which was a 25% increase on the previous year. It was ranked in 22nd in 2006, 11th in 2007. The numbers were increasing steadily every year and this year, it made substantial progress in sales while Toyota is planning a full-model change this Spring. This was a bit of a surprise for us in the auto business. Honestly speaking, I always thought that hybrid cars are too much more expensive than normal cars to limit the buyers but now it is in the top 10 ranking, which means it must have captured most of the car users needs.

As hybrid cars are still expensive, most of us have to think again when it comes to buying one, last year’s high petrol cost might have helped to push their sales. When you choose a hybrid car, you usually calculate how much you can save in petrol cwhen onsidering the extra cost to buy one. Until last year, there was not enough point buying one when the petrol price was stable to get much advantage but when the petrol price shot up last year, people must have thought the difference was good enough to consider buying one.

From this Spring in Japan, the government is going to lower the tax on hybrid cars. This is expected to provide better conditions for hybrid car sales and other car manufacturers are also starting to sell hybrid models from next month. If it brings competition and record high sales in hybrid cars, the car prices will be dropped so that consumers feel that they are getting a bargain.

Also, Honda’s compact car Fit got back to the top after a 6 year break. Thanks to the full-model change in October 2007, even in monthly bases, it has been on the top for 10 months with only a few losses when Toyota Corolla took the premium place in October & November. Having test driven a Fit, although not as good as Prius, you can see that it is very economical and because of the body size, it is easy to drive around. It surely is value for money. Until 2007, Toyota Corolla was struggling for sales of 2% less than the year before. The ranking was as follows:

New-Car Sales ranking (2008)

(Name of Car)　　　　(Numbers of Sales, Year-on-year rate%)
======================================================
1.　　　Honda Fit　　　　　　　174,914 (50.1)
2.　　　Toyota Corolla　　　　144,051 (▲2.1)
3.　　　Toyota Vitz　　　　　　123,337 (1.6)
4.　　　Toyota Crown　　　　74,904 (32.7)
5.　　　Toyota Prius　　　　　73,110 (25.4)
6.　　　Nissan Selena　　　　  72,927 (▲6.0)
7.　　　Toyota Passo　　　　　72,767 (▲9.1)
8.　　　Toyota Voxy　　　　　70,165 (▲4.5)
9.　　　Nissan Tiida　　　　　 65,302 (4.9)
10.　　Mazda Demio　　　　　64,990 (▲0.8)



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