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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

How do these two brands survive?

In May, Mitsubishi sold 4,352 vehicles. Dying Saturn sold twice as many cars, and dying Pontiac three times as many. And Mitusbishi's sales were down by 58% over last year.

Suzuki sold only 2,585 vehicles in May, down a whopping 75% over last year.

The entire Suzuki line-up was outsold by Mini, which has a few variations of a single model.

How is it that Mitsubishi and Suzuki will survive in the U.S. market? What does Mitsubishi sell that is exciting, other than the Lancer? Does Suzuki sell anything exciting? I suspect they will go the way of Isuzu, fading out of public memory.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably the brands won't survive in the U.S. if their sales stay at that level for long. But it's not an apt comparison to Pontiac and Saturn, since the North American market is a tiny slice of the whole Suzuki and Mitsubishi pie. So they can continue selling cars here as long as they make a marginal profit on each, as the fixed prices are covered with their sales in Asia and elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Mitsubishi dying, that I understand. I live in a lower income area and Suzuki sells a ton of vehicles here, you see them everywhere, especially the SX/4 and all of the older SUVs. They may not be so popular in wealthier and more urban areas, I suppose.

Anonymous said...

I don't know. With the economy most likely having a very brief recovery and going back into another recession... who knows who will be left.
Probably the ones who develop electric and fuel cell tech while continuing to produce highly profitable vehicles (i.e. not electric cars)

Anonymous said...

Suzuki doesn't sell just cars. It also sells Motorcycles, ATV's and Outboard Engines.

North American market share isn't always the equivalent of a Brand's global market share. Suzuki is amazingly successful in other markets. Check them out in India - they practically have a monopoly of the market share over there.

Suzuki will be just fine.

Unknown said...

The thing about NA market share is that it is expensive to develop cars for the U.S. market, because of crash and emissions regulations.

Compared to a car engineered for India or China, a U.S. car has literally $1000's worth of equipment added to it.

So what amazes me is that Mitsu and Suzuki spend all this money on engineering cars for the N.A. market, and sell so few, and yet seem to hang on somehow!

Anonymous said...

It's part of their agreement with GM that they are allowed to compete with x amount of Suzuki-badged vehicles in their CAMI venture agreement? Maybe

Anonymous said...

Comment above on Suzuki --- as far as Mitzu, possibly a "loss leader" to keep their Friday Club members name in the American public eye. Of course, the problem with that is they're building junk that doesn't float well.