John:

You might want to start looking at another brand. At the rate Ford is going, with numerous large population recalls within the last couple years and the loss of market share (Just reported by CNN & CBS that Toyota has for the first time beaten Ford in Market Shares), loss of consumer confidence, and if I am not mistaken recent labor issues, I expect it won't be too long before before they file for Chapter 11 Protection like the airlines.

I truly hope they can clean house and re-establish themselves with consumers and products. Being a long-time Ford supporter and customer, it will be a very sad day if they do file. But at the rate they going with these recalls and such, I and others have seen the proverbial writing on the wall.

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Toyota dominates auto dealer survey
Asian brands take top spots, led by Lexus, Scion, Acura, dealers' group says.

Monday, July 31, 2006; Posted: 3:50 p.m. EDT (19:50 GMT)

DETROIT (Reuters) -- Asian automotive brands dominated a U.S. survey of dealer satisfaction, with Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. taking the top three spots led by its Lexus and Scion vehicle lines.

The survey, conducted by the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) in January and February and made available to Reuters on Monday, asked franchise auto dealers to rate their satisfaction with the automakers they represent on a 100-point scale based.

Toyota's luxury Lexus brand took the top spot with an average score of 96 followed by the Japanese automaker's youth-oriented Scion brand.

Honda was No. 3 with its luxury nameplate Acura.

Hyundai Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. rounded out the top five spots.

Automakers rely on the strength of their dealer networks and track dealer profitability and satisfaction closely since both provide a reading on the immediate market value of their brands.

NADA quoted member dealers as saying that sales performance strongly influenced satisfaction, a major reason for the higher rankings for the Japanese and Korean auto brands that continue to take share of the U.S. market.

The survey was taken during a quarter in which financial markets and consumers had grown wary of GM's prospects and the world's largest automaker only saw two of its brands - Hummer and Cadillac - top the industry average of 71.2

DaimlerChrysler AG's brands all trailed the industry average with Jeep at 71.2, Chrysler at 70.8, Mercedes-Benz at 70.5 and Dodge at 69.

Ford was the lowest ranked volume manufacturer with a rating of 63.7, making it the fifth-lowest ranked brand overall. Ford's Lincoln-Mercury nameplate came in one rank higher at 63.8, according to the survey.

Results of the survey were published by NADA for its members in the July issue of the dealer-focused trade magazine AutoExec.

SUVs are out. So what's hot now?

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Toyota profits in overdrive
Automaker posts better-than-expected earnings, maintains forecast for record year.
August 4 2006: 11:06 AM EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world's most profitable car maker, posted a better-than-expected 26.5 percent rise in quarterly operating profit as sales charged ahead in North America and Europe, and kept its forecast for another year of record earnings.

Toyota, whose market value of $188 billion is nearly treble the combined worth of Detroit's big three auto makers, is relentlessly winning drivers around the world with its fuel-efficient cars, and should soon overtake General Motors Corp. as the world's biggest car maker by sales volume.
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April-June operating profit at Japan's top auto maker was ¥512.42 billion ($4.45 billion), versus ¥405.13 billion a year earlier, beating a mean estimate of ¥493.4 billion from eight brokerages compiled by Reuters Estimates.

"These are extremely good earnings," said Koji Endo, a Credit Suisse auto analyst. "The yen weakened and the company had considerable sales growth, especially in North America and in Asia."

With gasoline prices near record highs, demand in the United States, the world's biggest car market, has been concentrated on Toyota (Charts) and rival Honda Motor Co. Both brands marked milestones in July, with Toyota selling more cars in the United States than Ford Motor Co., and Honda outselling DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler arm.

In an overall U.S. market that shrank 14 percent last month, Toyota increased its sales by 16 percent, giving it a best-ever share of 16.4 percent -- beating Ford's 15.3 percent and well above Chrysler's 10.2 percent, data showed this week.

"Toyota's strength is that as gasoline prices have risen, it has been able to take advantage of that by selling fuel-efficient cars in the United States," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments. "It is likely to stay in its leading position."

Net profit grew 39.2 percent in the quarter to ¥371.50 billion, helped by a weaker yen that offset higher raw materials costs.

Revenue rose 13.2 percent to ¥5.64 trillion as robust sales in Western markets made up for a slowdown in parts of Asia and sluggish demand in Japan.

Toyota reiterated that it expects its group-based global vehicle sales for the 2006/07 business year to total 8.45 million units, unchanged from the forecast it issued in May.

It also left intact its sales forecasts for each region.

Honda, which introduced the first gasoline-electric hybrid car in the United States in 1999, also reported a double-digit jump in quarterly profit last week, driven by red-hot sales of its Civic and other fuel-efficient sedans.

Analysts cautioned, however, that a heavy shift in demand to smaller cars is putting pressure on profitability even at Toyota.

Margins on cheaper cars such as the Corolla and models in Toyota's youth-oriented Scion brand are thinner than those on larger sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.

For the year to March, the maker of the Prius hybrid and Camry car has forecast a modest 1.2 percent rise in operating profit to ¥1.90 trillion. Analysts predict ¥2.03 trillion.

Toyota has said it expects its full-year net profit to dip 4.5 percent to ¥1.31 trillion, due to year-earlier one-off valuation gains. Analysts see a slight increase to 1.4 trillion yen, according to 18 forecasts compiled by Reuters Estimates.

Toyota shares fell 6.8 percent in April-June, while the transport sector subindex dropped 8 percent.

Ahead of the results, Toyota closed down 0.5 percent at ¥6,080 Friday. The transport sector was off 0.4 percent.

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Toyota becomes No. 2 automaker
U.S. sales for Ford, Chrysler and GM drop steeply in July, while Japanese company boasts a 16.2 percent increase.
August 2 2006: 9:19 AM EDT

DETROIT (Reuters) -- U.S. auto sales slid 17 percent in July as Americans shunned trucks and opted for more fuel-efficient cars, catapulting Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. past Ford Motor Co. into the No. 2 spot for the first time.

Detroit-based automakers suffered double-digit declines in sales from the peak of last summer's incentive-driven boom, with DaimlerChrysler AG's (Charts) Chrysler Group and Ford hardest-hit in a market hurt by high interest rates and gas prices.

Chrysler Group lost 37 percent and Ford (Charts) 34 percent, but Toyota (Charts) jumped an industry-leading 16 percent, driven by a 25 percent surge for passenger cars such as the Corolla.

Sales for Japan's Honda Motor Co. (Charts) gained 10 percent and South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co. added 6 percent, putting all three Asian automakers on track for a larger share of a softening U.S. market for new vehicles.

General Motors Corp. (Charts), the No. 1 automaker worldwide, posted a 19.5 percent drop in U.S. sales, in line with expectations, given the tough year-earlier comparison.

Autodata Corp. reported that overall sales of U.S. light vehicles came in at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 17.24 million units in July, down from a near-record high of 20.72 million a year earlier when the traditional Big Three offered employee discounts to all buyers.

Chrysler Group, which has been working to sell off inventory ahead of the launch of key new models, was the only automaker to bring back employee pricing this July, a sequel that fizzled with U.S. consumers.

DaimlerChrysler's sales dropped 34 percent in July, a steeper-than-expected drop that analysts said underscored Chrysler's reliance on rolling out new hit products rather than competing on price.

Chrysler responded to its weak July sales numbers by extending its package of discounts, including employee-level pricing and zero-percent financing, until the end of August.

Ford's sales were weighed down by a 44 percent slide in its profitable truck lineup, an area of the market the automaker has long dominated.

"Ford and Chrysler were just simply disappointing," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at Edmunds.com who had forecast higher sales. "It's a quite dramatic decline."

Said George Magliano, analyst at Global Insight: "I think for Chrysler it's very short-term and shows how product sensitive they are. I'm more worried about Ford. Ford is more structural, I think."

GM, which set off last summer's price-war, has steered clear of a repeat of the same kind of sweeping rebates this year.

"I would view our results as very solid," said GM sales analyst Paul Ballew. "In fact, better than what we expected at the beginning of the month, and better than we thought even at midmonth."
Hangover from the boom

Last year's summer price war boosted the number of cars sold but sacrificed profitability for both the U.S. automakers and their dealers. The incentives also made monthly shifts in auto sales highly volatile.

"What we aren't going to have in (2006) was this roller-coaster that we were on in (2005)," Ford sales analyst George Pipas said. "We're aren't going to see the peaks and hopefully we won't see the valley."

For the year to date, SUV sales are down 19 percent, while pickup truck sales have dropped 16 percent, said Paul Taylor, chief economist with the National Automobile Dealers Association.

That puts pressure on the traditional Big Three in coming months to increase incentives and rely more heavily on lower-margin sales to commercial fleet operators, which include car rental companies, he said.

Reflecting their fall from favor with consumers, large trucks and SUVs carried higher-than-average discounts of more than $5,200 on average in July, according to Edmunds.com.

Despite the drop in July sales, GM, Ford and Chrysler all reported progress in reducing vehicle inventories, in part because of production cutbacks.

GM had 930,000 vehicles at the end of July, down 21 percent from the previous month, while Ford reduced its inventory by nearly 15 percent to 677,000 vehicles. Chrysler's inventory declined 14 percent to 560,210 vehicles.

The defection from SUVs also hurt some luxury car manufacturers in July. Porsche AG suffered a 23 percent drop in demand for its Cayenne model, even as its overall sales rose 12 percent on the back of strong demand for the Cayman coupe.

By contrast, new compact and sub-compact models have proved popular. Nissan Motor Co. said it sold 2,856 of the new Versa compacts in July, double the company's internal forecast.

Nissan, which is considering a tie-up that would extend its current alliance with Renault SA to include GM, posted a drop in overall sales of 16 percent, outperforming the market by a slight margin.