LexFather

Its a damn Toyota list!

ES350Bob

genearch has a valid point.

The ES350 has not sold or exceeded the expected 70,000. The figures released combine both 330 and 350 sales and 330 sales alone were over 15,400 as of April sales and they continued to be sold beyond April as closeout.

As a former manufacturing business owner I would be very concerned that there is not even a marginal positive sales growth of 1 or 2 percent even, not even neutral sales growth, but instead significant negative sales growth compared to prior year on so many models on offer.

More concerning to me would be that one of the better selling models of all models on offer is the most problematic, the ES350.

LexBob2

I'm not sure I understand your numbers. Thru Dec '06 nearly 76,000 ES models were sold, assuming 15,400 were 330's, that means 60,600 were 350's in the 9 months they were on sale. In Dec '06 alone, they sold 8,736 350's. If that monthly rate continues, or even comes close, they'll easily exceed 70,000 annual sales.

ES350Bob

He had said the 70k had already been exceeded in spite of it only being on sale since May. The way the ledger is released, co-mingling the two models, it gets confusing.

TRDFantasy

Maybe it's a different situation in the States (although I'm sure you can locate a 525i in different regions) but here in Canada there are plenty of 525i models, *not* 525xi models, available at dealers.

To put forth an alternate perspective, I doubt you can get your hands on a base GS350. In fact, many in the GS forum are stating dealer reports that the GS350 is in low supply, and hard to get in a lot of regions.

TRDFantasy

Fact is, Lexus DID sell over 70,000 ES models this year. Does it really matter if they were ES330s, ES350s, or a combination of the two?

I mentioned that it was impossible for Lexus to only sell ES350s this year, since the car came out in May. On top of that, demand for the ES330 was quite low in the months leading up to the ES350 release, so this should be viewed as an even bigger accomplishment.

At the current sales rate, the ES350 for 2007 will easily exceed 70,000 sales, if not surpassing 80,000 sales.

XeroK00L

AutoSpies posted an image of the news article. Funny how the news article uses an LS460 image to illustrate "HOT OFF THE LOT" when it's the C70 that won. Just goes to show where the real hawtness is.

TRDFantasy

Incredible numbers, 6 models on that list are Toyotas! It's shocking that the Camry remains on the lot for less than 20 days, considering the Solara must be bringing down those numbers.

It's also surprising how popular the Rav 4 remains, and looking at the sales numbers, I think Toyota might be limited by supply, as Rav 4 sales numbers have remained consistently high for several months. It would explain Toyota's move to build Rav 4 models at the new Ontario plant.

The IS and GS I believe are low 20s.

LexFather

Lexus wanted 17% market share for the IS/ES, i.e 119k units. They got 20% market share. We know this b/c we have pics of said presentation and we now have year end results.

Lexus/Toyota is a PRODUCTION CAPACITY. They can barely make enough cars/suvs due to demand.

This, IMO is contributing to some quality issues. They simply cannot keep up with DEMAND.

doug_999

Exactly - finding a base anything luxury is almost impossible. My point is, a GS350 with AWD goes for about $50K with your normal options as does the 525xi.....

ES350Bob

If production demand was tied to and explained away quality issues, we would see as many complaints on the IS by owners as we see for the ES, not even close.

Whoever is running IS quality assurance needs to oversee the ES side for a while, a few years of oversight maybe.

LexFather

IS is built off the GS platform
ES is built off the Camry platform
They are built in different factories in Japan.

Seems the tranny the ES/Camry shares has the issue. No other Lexus 6 speed has it.
So it must be a Camry/ES glitch, IMO and both have never sold better. I am sad that the issue has not been solved it.

ES350Bob

Now hold that thought above and pretend you are the CEO of Toyota overseeing Lexus passenger car sales and I believe you will see the point genreach seemed was trying to make and I was pointing out as a result of responses to his keen business insight.

You cannot have one of your best selling models on Lexus side be the most problematic whilst witnessing a decline in sales on all other models with near zero problems by comparison, except one other, the IS.

I now understand exactly why, nearly every chance he gets in world publications, the CEO is prepping the public on quality issues. He already knew the above long before we did and he is laying ground work to deal with the resultant bad PR go he is going to have to deal with over it.

And whoever or whatever internal group within Lexus released that spreadsheet containing mathematical errors into the public domain is not helping him either, it looks bad.

LexFather

Before we just to this conclusion, we don't have a large enough sample size to see how much of a problem it is. Again, the ES did win an initial quality award. 76k just were sold.

I still will not say the ES is hugely problematic. Some cars, for some reason, have this tranny glitch. We have tons of HAPPY owners on this site for instance.

LexBob2

That's a fair statement, IMO..