American Honda reported the sale of 102,827 Honda-badged vehicles (thus excluding Acura) in September 2019, representing a 13.7 percent decrease over September 2018.
With two fewer selling days in 2019’s September and none of the big Labor Day holiday sales falling during the month, it’s no surprise that sales were down overall compared to 2018, and Honda says it was a strong month anyway.
“Following the best sales month in our company’s history in August, the Honda brand delivered balanced sales performance across our passenger car and light truck offerings,” said senior VP of American Honda’s Automobile Sales division, Henio Arcangeli Jr. “As we enter the final quarter of 2019, we are expecting a strong finish to the year for both the Honda and Acura brands.”
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As is the case more often than not, the Honda CR-V was the best-performing model in the brand’s lineup, even though sales were briefly paused as Honda updated its owner’s manuals. The automaker also reported strong sales for what it considers to be is “gateway” models: the Fit and HR-V sold 2,707 and 7,528 units, respectively, up about 80 and 26 percent, also respectively.
Notably, the Honda Accord and Civic continued to post strong sales numbers—each above 20,000 for a combined total of 42,663. This helped Honda cars top 46 percent of overall Honda brand sales for the month, which is well above the industry average of 30 percent. Currently, the only other automaker that seems to have any success selling passenger cars at about the same pace as trucks and SUVs is Toyota.
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