VW And Hyundai Are Sales Losers Again

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 2, 9:08AM EDT

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The U.S. October car and light truck sales numbers were another reason for the industry to cheer the remarkable run the industry has had since the depth of the recession in 2009 when the American market yielded only sightly more than 9 million units. That figure will likely be closer to 16 million units this year. Although overall sales dipped 4.2% to 1.139 million, some companies had their best October sales in years. The exceptions to the mostly successful month were VW and Hyundai along with stablemate Kia.

VW’s problems in the U.S. are so severe it is a wonder that its American management, led by Jonathan Browning, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, has not be sacked and the entire line up of its cars replaced. It routinely finishes near the bottom of quality measurement surveys. Buyers just don’t like its products. And, it has a desultory line-up which includes the bland Passat and Jetta sedans, the GTI (which is at least fun to drive, but so are many competing vehicles), the ancient Beetle, and overly expensive Touareg SUV which has a name as weird as its design. Even with promotions which include “$0 down, $0 first month’s payment, and $0 at signing”, it cannot forces cars are the doors of its dealerships. VW’s market share in October dropped to 2.8% from 3.1% in the same month last year.

Hyundai and Kia sales have also fallen off a cliff, particularly given that they were the hot brands in the U.S. for several years. A scandal over how each promoted miles per gallon has take a toll so severe that it will take years for each to regain its brand equity–if that ever happens. And, the largest Japanese and U.S. car companies has bench marked the models of the South Korean companies and come up with very effective competing vehicles of their own.

Hyundai, Kia, and VW needed American sales to fuel their marches toward world domination of the car business. They can give up on that strategy now.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.