Detroit Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius hybrid was the third best-selling US car line last month, helping Asian automakers post a 10 per cent sales increase amid improving consumer demand for new vehicles.
Sales of Prius climbed 54 per cent to a record 28,711 in March, trailing only Toyota's Camry sedan and Nissan Motor Co.'s midsize Altima. Total Toyota deliveries rose 15 per cent, Nissan sales increased 13 per cent and Hyundai Motor Co. had a 13 per cent gain. Honda Motor Co. sales fell 5 per cent, the only drop among large Asian brands, based on figures separately released by the carmakers Tuesday.
Residual demand
"There's still some residual demand out there for Prius, and Toyota now has the volume to meet it," Alan Baum, principal of Baum & Associates, a provider of auto-industry analysis in West Bloomfield, Michigan, said. "They're going to hit this while demand is strong." Job gains and buyers who put off car purchases during the recession countered a 20 per cent increase in average US unleaded gasoline prices this year through March. Industrywide car and truck sales rose 13 per cent last month, sending the industry to the best quarterly pace since 2008.
"When gasoline prices are high, what makes carmakers competitive is whether they have a fuel-efficient car like the Prius," Kohei Takahashi, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said by telephone Tuesday. "The trend is to downsize, too, which makes the Prius even more competitive."
"In the United States, consumers are replacing ageing cars and volumes are likely to increase to 14 million or 14.5 million units this year," Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan and Renault, said Tuesday at an automotive forum in New York.
