Lexus tops BMW in U.S. registrations; 2015 luxury title in dispute

spwolf

Expert
Messages
3,510
Reactions
3,439
Lexus tops BMW in U.S. registrations; 2015 luxury title in dispute
Not so fast on BMW winning the 2015 U.S. luxury crown over Lexus and Mercedes.

According to manufacturer-reported sales released last month, BMW won. But Polk said today that Lexus was tops in U.S. vehicle registrations last year with 340,392 vs. BMW’s 335,259.

It’s a twist in the annual hotly contested luxury brand race, with BMW, Mercedes and Lexus jockeying throughout the year. On Jan. 5, BMW reported total 2015 sales of 346,023. That was 1,422 more than Lexus and 2,935 ahead of Mercedes (excluding Sprinter).

“Luxury sales leadership as measured by vehicle registrations is important to Lexus as it represents actual consumers engaging directly with our dealers,” Lexus General Manager Jeff Bracken told Automotive News in an email.

BMW spokesman Kenn Sparks said, “Many factors influence registrations, and as a result, registrations often lag sales, especially at the end of the year.”

The U.S. registration numbers from Polk, a unit of IHS Automotive, are lower than reported sales for all three brands: By 4,209 for Lexus, 10,764 for BMW and 8,396 for Mercedes.


http://www.autonews.com/article/20160212/RETAIL01/160219935/0?cciid=internal-anhome-mostright


King is back! Dealers buying vehicles to stuff end of year sales for BMW already happened in 2012:

BMW’s claim to the 2012 luxury-brand crown was disputed by Mercedes-Benz after Polk later reported Mercedes had 5,025 more registrations than BMW. The two German automakers had traded barbs for weeks after BMW had reported a huge December sales surge to claim the title.

Then Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Steve Cannon fired the final shot in that spat: “We're the leader in the luxury segment, at least when you're talking about cars in customer hands,” he huffed. “Volumes can be manipulated. Registrations, not so easy.”
 

Gecko

Administrator
Messages
4,721
Reactions
11,283
^I have friends who have worked at BMW and MB dealers, and both have told me about this process of pulling cars in and out of inventory, dealers buying them as "loaners" and then returning them early in the new year to the new car lot, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CIF

Ruksac

Follower
Messages
128
Reactions
163
I used to work at the largest Lexus dealer on the planet and they used to RDR stock units also, usually to a car rental company like Hertz. That was usually just to beat competing dealers who were also vying for the #1 Lexus dealer title. So it's not a practice limited to anyone or any brand. It's a way to report a vehicle as sold to the manufacturer without having to register or title the car. Registrations would be the most accurate way to report sales volume as once it's registered, a title is generated from the MSO.
 

krew

Site Founder
Administrator
Messages
3,686
Reactions
5,670
krew
16-02-14-lexus-nx-usa-luxury-leadership.jpg


Lexus led all luxury automotive brands in U.S. 2015 vehicle registrations, calling into question which manufacturer was the best selling luxury brand last year.
View the original article post
 

Black Dynamite

Follower
Messages
153
Reactions
151
BMW spokesman Kenn Sparks said, “Many factors influence registrations, and as a result, registrations often lag sales, especially at the end of the year.”

Translation: "Every day we're hustlin', hustlin', hustlin'!"

There's definitely no shame in BMW's game. They do much more fleet sales than Lexus and Mercedes.
Both the Germans also do about 25% more incentives than Lexus as well.
Having more actual customers pays off in the long run.
BD
 
Messages
114
Reactions
85
Tens thousand of those European brands have been shipped to China and other 3rd world countries.
The small companies & individuals have been doing it for more than a decade.
If anyone have opportunities to be in China, just take a tour at any major seaport. Thousands of US version vehicles for sale there at anytime, mainly European brand SUVs.

I believe that Lexus have been the best selling luxury brand for the last 15 years in USA.
However, outside USA, a totally different story.
 

IS-SV

Premium Member
Messages
1,886
Reactions
1,350
BMW's relentless pursuit of this title is a bit self serving and not especially customer focused IMHO.

But not as embarrassing as VW's (failed) race for highest ww auto sales volume last year.
 
Messages
114
Reactions
85
BMW's relentless pursuit of this title is a bit self serving and not especially customer focused IMHO.

But not as embarrassing as VW's (failed) race for highest ww auto sales volume last year.
Off topic: just notice how close in sales among the VW and BMW/Lexus/Benz in USA.
So glad those people don't educate me that Golf & Jetta are luxury cars
 

spwolf

Expert
Messages
3,510
Reactions
3,439
BMW's relentless pursuit of this title is a bit self serving and not especially customer focused IMHO.

But not as embarrassing as VW's (failed) race for highest ww auto sales volume last year.

VW doing lots of PR on being #1 is also not new... it happened in 2009 I believe and most of the major agencies reported this until February next year when it was found out that they are not #1.

So same now, they did a lot of PR that they are #1 even if they held the title for 3 months only in the year, since their Chinese sales dropped heavily in June... so by September they were already #2.
 

Joaquin Ruhi

Moderator
Messages
1,529
Reactions
2,434
A new story from Bloomberg sheds more light on the end-of-year manipulative tactics by BMW. Some highlights below:

BMW wielded an unlikely tool to hold onto its crown in the U.S. luxury-car market last year: the loaner.

The German automaker narrowly outsold Mercedes-Benz and Lexus, and its success hinged partly on some deal-making in the showroom. Its strategy: Pay dealers to buy BMWs for their fleets of loaner vehicles, showing off the latest models to service customers and boosting sales.

Other carmakers have used similar tactics. But BMW has been unusually assertive, according to people familiar with the matter -- so much so, in fact, that it might have lost No. 1 bragging rights to Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus without the strategy.

BMW paid its dealers as much as $1,750 a vehicle in December to put new models in their service fleets... Dealers booked the sales immediately, and the deliveries helped the company hit its target, said the people, who asked not to be identified because details of the strategy are private. BMW beat Lexus for the year by about 1,400 cars and Daimler AG’s Mercedes by almost 3,000...

All three automakers have loaner programs, but “BMW has been pretty aggressive,” said Frank Ursomarso, who owns dealerships in Wilmington, Delaware...

“Auto companies do things like this all the time to set sales records or make claims that they are the best in show,” said Maryann Keller, an independent auto consultant..."BMW can beat their chest this year. But you can question whether they did it on the same terms as their competitors.”

BMW also outspent its rivals in December on incentives to consumers, providing an average of $5,169 a vehicle on discounted lease deals and rebates, about $600 more than Mercedes and $1,400 more than Lexus, according to Autodata...

While customer service is part of the reason for the incentives, the loaner program likely did help BMW win the sales crown, according to Eric Lyman, senior analyst with TrueCar Inc...

“This is a strategy we see across the industry and especially with luxury brands,” he said. “That probably got BMW some or all of the 1,400” margin over Lexus.

Another measure of sales -- total calendar-year registrations -- shows Lexus on top and BMW third, according to data from IHS Automotive. The Japanese brand’s tally was 340,392, while Mercedes’s was 337,288 and BMW’s was 335,259.

IHS doesn’t count all the cars sold to dealers as new-vehicle registrations, in some cases because buyers haven’t taken possession of them yet, said Tom Libby, manager of loyalty solutions at IHS. But this doesn’t necessarily mean BMW needed the loaners to win, he added: Sales in late December might not show up in state registrations until the next calendar year...

Chasing sales gains has a cost, however. BMW once had the best resale value among luxury brands, but not in recent years, Lyman said. This year, a three-year-old BMW has an average value of 48.4 percent of the new-car price, compared with 49.8 percent for all other luxury brands, according to TrueCar.

“The luxury market is only so big,” Keller said. “Do they think that if they have more BMWs out there that people will want to buy them even more? There are consequences for this.”

The article also devotes a paragraph to Lexus' reply of sorts:

Lexus allocates cars to dealers to put in their loaner fleets and charges them a subsidized lease rate, according to Maurice Durand, a company spokesman. Dealers then sell the vehicles on their used lots after at least a year of service, said Peter Blackstock, who owns Lexus Monterey Peninsula in Seaside, California, and is the NADA’s Lexus brand representative. He keeps these models as loaners for about 18 months.

Here's a link to the full article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ales-numbers-by-paying-dealers-to-buy-loaners
 

IS-SV

Premium Member
Messages
1,886
Reactions
1,350
What I tried to say in post #9 but said better by Keller in above article:

“The luxury market is only so big,” Keller said. “Do they think that if they have more BMWs out there that people will want to buy them even more? There are consequences for this.”
 

CIF

Premium Member
Messages
1,675
Reactions
1,825
Great article, thank you! This only further reinforces the facts of BMW's shady tactics to desperately achieve that "#1" spot. I'm glad at least Lexus isn't so desperate or so focused on such a meaningless achievement.

On a related note, this is added to my list of reasons why I strongly dislike the dealer system in terms of the entire sales process. Dealers are directly facilitating and complying with BMW's shady tactics here. Let's say hypothetically that dealers did not exist, and brands were forced to sell direct to customers. Then BMW's tactics in this case would be much harder to implement, if not impossible. It would also put much more accountability and responsibility directly on BMW itself, without the existence of the "middle man", the dealership.
 

Black Dynamite

Follower
Messages
153
Reactions
151
A new story from Bloomberg sheds more light on the end-of-year manipulative tactics by BMW. Some highlights below:



The article also devotes a paragraph to Lexus' reply of sorts:



Here's a link to the full article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ales-numbers-by-paying-dealers-to-buy-loaners

In other words, they're not greedy, they're just needy!
They needed to put $5k on every hood, plus run a loaner hustle program to keep the sales crown for one more year. Oh, the desperation!

Enjoy it, Ladies! You won't be seeing that again for LONG time!
BD
 

mikeavelli

Moderator
Messages
6,775
Reactions
15,142
I have to say I am impressed that the press is really covering this. A ethical BMW win shows to the world that people consider them to have a superior product. This unethical crap means they just want the sales crown by any means and it has nothing to do with the vehicle.
 

Bulldog 1

Follower
Messages
380
Reactions
387
I have to say I am impressed that the press is really covering this. A ethical BMW win shows to the world that people consider them to have a superior product. This unethical crap means they just want the sales crown by any means and it has nothing to do with the vehicle.
Is it a German thing?!?