Car Sales Sucked For Almost Everyone But Mitsubishi, Because Mitsubishi Sells Cheap Cars

The last quarter of car sales was a shitshow for even the most successful brands. Does this mean the car market is collapsing? Absolutely not. The market is in a strange neutral period where the difference between a good month and a bad month can come down to a slight nudge. Unless you’re Mitsubishi. Nothing is stopping Mitsubishi.

It’s sales day so I now have third-quarter delivery reports from all the big players to talk about, and I am jacked-to-the-tits as Ryan Gosling loves to say. I’m going to start off this Morning Dump with the general market and why I think that Mitsubishi is particularly well positioned here.

What about Stellantis? They’re still at the bottom and it’s worth calling out just how bad it is over there. And Tesla? The brand is somewhere in the middle. Finally, let’s wrap up with how hybrids are doing in this “Year of the Hybrids.”

Overall Q3 Market In U.S. Probably Down 1-2%, Mitsubishi Is Up 42%

Spending on automobiles is “volatile” according to Cox Automotive, which is as good a description as you’ll find anywhere. The difference between an up month or a down month can come down to a hurricane, a cyberattack, a port strike, the number of selling days, or a recall. In a robust market, there’s room to absorb disruptions, but that’s not the market we’re in right now.

Automotive News has a roundup of the automakers that have reported Q3 sales in the United States, and the numbers are weak almost across the board, with brands overall averaging sales down about 0.5% compared to Q3 2023. Adding in dismal Stellantis numbers and assuming weak performance by Tesla, it’s likely the market is down even more.

Even stalwart brands like Toyota are seeing a drop, though in Toyota’s case, its 10.4% quarterly drop has a lot to do with a stop-sale on its three-row crossovers. The brand also regularly has the lowest inventory in the country, and it’s extremely difficult to get incentives on a Toyota that doesn’t rhyme with “Bees Forks.” Honda is up for the quarter, but even that brand suffered a 7% sales drop in September after reporting 18 straight months of sales gains.

What’s the deal? Affordability. It’ll take a long time for interest rates to come down, and there are still likely buyers on the sideline waiting.

From the Automotive News story linked above:

The average annual percentage rate on a new vehicle was 7.1 percent in the third quarter, Edmunds said, marking the sixth consecutive quarter that new-vehicle finance rates have hovered above 7 percent.

Edmunds, citing an August survey, said 62 percent of car owners planning to buy a new vehicle in the next year have delayed a purchase because of high interest rates.

I also think political uncertainty plays into this. If rates can come down a little in November and the election creates a clear winner I think people might be more confident about making the purchase and we could see a huge end to the year. At the same time, another disaster or war in the Middle East could cause the opposite to happen.

If there’s one way to get through this market it’s to have affordable vehicles or hybrids. Do you know who has both? Freakin’ Mitsubishi! Back from the dead! The Automaker Voted Most Likely To Not Be An Automaker Anymore! The company nearly collapsed in 2016 after a testing scandal, and a hasty alliance was arranged that saw Nissan acquiring a third of Mitsubishi.

The brand’s Q3 sales rose to 42.3% over last year, which is better than everyone else. The closest was Mazda, but that brand was only up 24.9%. While Mitsubishi is still a small-ish brand, only selling 31,588 cars in that period, this makes it almost as big as Acura and twice as big as Infiniti. If it keeps growing at this rate it’ll start catching up with brands like Buick and Audi.

How is it doing it? Let’s look at Mitsubishi’s own sales chart:

Mitsubishi doesn’t sell many vehicles and it sells no vehicles with a starting price above the industry average transaction price (which is about $48k). The most expensive vehicle for sale in the lineup, the Outlander PHEV, starts at around $42,000 with destination charges included. The cheapest is the $17,000 Mitsubishi Mirage.

Which models are selling better than they were a year ago?

Sorry, couldn’t help it.

Sales of every single model are up, but it’s the cheap Mitsubishi Mirage that’s up 153% year-over-year. I don’t think there’s any trickery here as the Mirage hasn’t been updated much and has been on sale with few disruptions since coming out of the pandemic. People need cars and these cars are cheap.

Of course, Mitsubishi said they’re going to stop selling the Mirage after 2025, though the brand plans to stockpile cars to sell through next year. Perhaps Mitsubishi should reconsider?

Tesla Did Fine, Not Great, Just Fine

If you look only at the third quarter then Tesla’s 462,890 deliveries is an ok number. If you want to zoom out and look at the bigger picture it’s not that great.

From Bloomberg:

Tesla Inc. posted its first increase in quarterly vehicle sales this year, though the automaker let down investors expecting more of a bump from China boosting electric car subsidies.

The Elon Musk-led company handed over 462,890 vehicles to customers in the last three months, up 6.4% from a year ago. Deliveries came up shy of the roughly 463,900 units expected among analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

“We will see some pressure on shares this morning as investors walk away from delivery numbers expecting more,” Daniel Ives, a Wedbush analyst with the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock, wrote in a report Wednesday.

Tesla will be showing off its Cybertaxi and other products later this month, which might cause the stock price to go back up if CEO Elon Musk can take a break from tweeting to deliver a good presentation.

Stellantis Sales Down 20% In Q3

Yeah, Stellantis didn’t stick the landing. It’s grim folks. You know how bad the news is? The one bright spot is Fiat, whose sales were up 118% this quarter with a whopping 316 total vehicles delivered overall. I’m pretty sure our Mercedes has sold more cars than Fiat this year.

Dodge is down 43% year-over-year, Chrysler is down 47%, Ram is down 19%, Jeep is down 6%, and Alfa is down 29%. It sucks. I haven’t seen this many negatives since that semester I volunteered in the junior high newspaper’s dark room. Excluding the new 500e, the cars that saw increases quarter-over-quarter were the Wagoneer (+3%), Compass (+71%), and the Hornet (+120%). The Hornet rolled out last year so some of this might be because Hornet had an incomplete quarter.

And what are the models that have seen sales decrease?

• Wrangler
• Gladiator
• Cherokee
• Grand Cherokee
• Renegade
• Grand Wagoneer
• Ram
• ProMaster Van
• 300
• Pacifica
• Charger
• Challenger
• Durango
• 500X
• Guliia
• Stelvio

That’s most of them. The Compass is one of the few affordable vehicles in that lineup and that’s the only one that’s selling.

Hybrids Rule Everything Around Me (HREAM)

It’s clear that affordable cars are doing better this quarter. What else? Hybrids. Ford is one of the few major automakers with quarterly gains (of 0.7%) and, while some of this has to do with F-150 delays, a lot of it has to do with hybrids. Last quarter Ford’s ICE sales were down 2.8%, its EV sales were up 12.2%, and its hybrid sales were up 38% year-over-year in Q3 2024.

While the rollout of the new Ford Ranger helped boost the brand’s sales, the company still sold 33% more Mavericks than last year, bringing total sales this year to over 100,000 models. Ford is finally breaking out specific hybrid truck sales numbers and we now know that Ford sold 16,561 hybrid Mavericks in Q3. That would make it the best-selling hybrid truck, except… the F-150 Hybrid just hit 20,129 sales.

It’s like this across the market. Hyundai hybrid sales rose 36% in September even though overall Hyundai deliveries dropped by 9%. Toyota dealers are saying that customers are waiting months for hybrids. The third quarter was Honda’s biggest ever for “electrified sales,” which is Honda’s hybrids plus a few Prologues thrown in there.

Hybrids are where it’s at.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

How have I never done A Tribe Called Quest here yet? Everyone is great on “Scenario” but it’s probably Busta who steals it.

The Big Question

Would you consider a Mitsubishi?