Carmakers that REALLY FAILED in 2022
Who needs a happy new year? Let’s scold the 10 worst performing car brands of 2022 and remind ourselves why good brands fall. Carmakers that tanked in 2022: bring on the hate mail…
Why should we care about car brands doing badly, commercially? Do we really need to point out their failures publicly, when they're already down?
Emphatically, yeah - we do. For two reasons: A) because it's hilarious - the facts are often funnier than any satire and everyone is entitled to need to laugh at the expense of a multi-million dollar multinational;
and B) because if you're in the market for a car right now, and you are enamoured of a particular vehicle, and you buy it at a time when that carmaker is developing a brown stain and its commercial trousers, this could turn into a nightmare for you.
In particular, if you have a legitimate problem with that car (and even the best cars are susceptible to problems), then that carmaker - or at least its local importer operation - is going to be your in-law, effectively.
See, you're married to the car you buy, and that brand becomes your in-laws. They might be the in-laws from hell if you've got a legitimate problem, and it's nice to get support when you need it. But when the balance sheet goes bad, the rug just immediately gets pulled out of things like dealer and head office technical support, the onshore spare parts inventory, and things like this. It happens because accountants move in and do everything reasonable (and unreasonable) that they can to prop up their failing balance sheet.
This is something very important to consider in the light of the recent release of car industry (reported) sales data for the year’s end of 2022. I thought we would highlight the more abjectly poor performers which you might like to just steer away from.
Here goes…
10. Peugeot (and Citroen) - stalled on the grid
The French brand has its supporters and you can count them on one hand, typically, at the moment. But it really does epitomize the myth of European build quality, in my estimation. The French actually moved the distributorship in Australia to a company you may not have heard of called Inchcape. You've heard of Subaru, well Inchcape imports Subaru into Australia and they have done for many decades. I had high hopes for this change to Inchcape because if anyone could’ve done it, Inchcape could’ve. But unfortunately they can't.
This change in distributorship happened in May of 2017, interestingly enough and since then Peugeot’s already abjectly crap sales have gotten even worse. They've just tanked - they're down from 3400 annually in 2017 to just over 2000 last year. That's a fall of almost 40 per cent and there's no end in sight. You could put the spare parts inventory in my freaking garage at this point you know which isn't all that comforting if you own a Peugeot.
Citroen, interestingly, was also part of that deal, their sales were even worse, it also collapsed under Inchcape. I don't know why, but they're 60 per cent down also. Perhaps Stellantis is somehow to blame >>
9. Ford - will it bend (to commercial pressure)?
The all-new Ranger - every Australian motoring journalist is walking around with an undignified lump in their trousers over the new Ranger, and this is despite the engineering glitches that have come to light and the legally reprehensible non-disclosure agreements that Ford appears to be handing out.
If you are a victim of one of those gaffes of theirs, please do send me the legal documentation and I guarantee that I will take your identity to the grave. I really do think this kind of thing deserves to be reported. Don't you?
Ford Australia is apparently resurrecting the ghost of Pinto at every turn for the past 10 years. In 2017, Ford sold just over 78,000 cars here in Australia. Last year: 66,000. That's a five year sales loss of 15 per cent. About 58,000 of those 66 000 somewhat quiet sales were Ranger and it's slightly less masculine sister, the Everest.
Ford is betting the farm on essentially one vehicle. That's kind of dangerous if something goes wrong, commercially. Not that you care. Dearborn doesn't give a crap about Ford Australia, obviously, or Australians who own Fords, which would be more relevant to you and me.
So 58,000 out of 66,000 vehicles are either Ranger or Everest, but there's only another 8000 sales remaining and they're split among nine different vehicles depending on how you view their inventory. Can you even name half of those other nine Ford vehicles?
Let’s not forget there's a cost involved with carrying the Puma or the EcoSport in your inventory, and I'd suggest that that cost is not being covered currently. They're just a millstone around Ford's neck, commercially. They couldn’t even sell that midsize SUV, Endura - in Australia, home of the midsize SUV, statistically.
I'd also suggest that Ford needs bogans more than bogans need Ford, for the foreseeable future. So dude, ask not what Centrelink can do for you: ask instead if enough of you pool your Centrelink entitlements, would it be sufficient to Timeshare a brand new XLT Ranger with your street, even if you have to stoop to the tiny 2.0-litre twin-turbo engine with that awful 10-speed transmission?
8. Lexus: Toyota when it's not Toyota, obviously.
Toyota's soulless wannabe prestige sub-brand Lexus and went poopy in its Birkin handbag properly in 2022.
Lexus managed over 9000 sales in 2021, even in spite of lockdowns and a pandemic and do on. But sales they plummeted in 2022, down almost 25 per cent, making just over 7000 sales - a deficit of 2200 units not sold. They even did better in 2020, the year everything turned to chaos, selling over 8800 vehicles. Same again in 2019 when 9600 sales was dead easy; 8800 in 2018. What you’re looking at, essentially, is a five-year flop for Lexus - their worst sales year in half a decade. What’s happened, I hear you ask.
It’s a perfect storm of incompetence, really. They’re the world's best carmaker at anti-environmental lobbying, despite the inherent bipolarity of this “war on carbon” and at the same time selling three of the biggest CO2 belching barges the LandCruiser, Prado and the mighty Hilux - all darlings of the bogan masses, yet apparently Toyota wants to make EVs.
In reality, Toyota’s products (especially Lexus) have gotten really old in the last three years and in 2022 (just compare them to a BMW or Genesis, for example). As a result of their obsession with cutting every single cent of excessive commercial fat off their ‘lean’ operations, when winter hit and suddenly everybody was locked inside buying gaming consoles and computers, Toyota couldn’t get out of the blocks building the nine million-plus cars we know it’s capable of making annually. Now, they’re paying for it.
This is what happens when accountants run car companies with no appreciation for the turbulence of the big wide world and be prudent with your business. It doesn’t help that Toyota has locked itself into old inefficient undesirable nickel-metal hydride battery tech in their hybrids. They certainly are doing their best to stifle innovation and adoption of lower-emissions vehicles, according to Greenpeace. The wheels literally fell off their BZ electric vehicle, for goodness sake. It's enough - almost - I think, to make Audi look good. Nah, not really.
7. Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda - same cars, different skins.
Volkswagen has fallen from roughly 58,000 sales here in Australia, to not quite 31,000. That's almost 50 per cent gone from the bottom line. Imagine the conference call conversations with Wolfsburg every month apropos of non-performance.
To the hastily re-badged Volkswagens now, which rich ‘bankers’ identify as Audi - they managed to do almost as badly as Fathership Volkswagen. Audi was down from 22,000 to not even 15,000 sales in five years time. They dropped 19 per cent alone from 19,000 sales in 2018, to 15,000 in 2019. And things have been rather flat every since - except for a 1 per cent increase in 2020 - saved by 160 souls, and 135 sympathisers in 2021 for just 16,000. At least they’re teutonically consistent.
And Skoda, which some people love yet should have gone to Specsavers. Skoda was also on the hunt for some highly absorbent adult underwear in 2022, after prick teasing us all with more than 9000 sales in 2021 - only to crash by almost 30 per cent to 6500 sales last year. Seems that even price leaders can’t necessarily move soured product.
6. Jeep - the jape that keeps on giving
Where would a list of lemons be without the venerated seven slotted rubbish heap we know and loathe as Jeep, the stepchild of Stellantis. Stellantis is, of course, the fabled underwater city where consumers could never get a refund, no matter how crap the product they purchased was.
Jeep's not dead yet in Australia, of course, but you certainly can smell it down-range. Let me tell you why. They closed out 2022’s sales efforts with 6658 units. That’s 14 per cent down year-on-year, continuing that nose-down trajectory since 2014 when they sold an impressive (yet entirely cynically earned) 30,408 sales. It was courtesy of 30,408 gullible Australians who jumped over the fence, just like in their ‘What happened to the Robinsons?’ ad, and bought a Jeep. Apparently the Robinsons, who collectively represent those 30,408 Aussies, never made it home, metaphorically.
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IT’S ONLY HALF TIME…
5. Land Rover - good for one thing
Ah, Land Rover. If I was the marketing director the write-off would be ‘Green Oval: Brown Trousers’.
But it's not - one of their shitheaps, I think it's the Range Rover Sport - actually describes itself as, “visceral, dramatic and uncompromising”. It’s the pinnacle of all-terrain marketing masturbation, which apparently isn’t working.
Who doesn't want a Land Rover? Answer: apparently nobody. Or at least increasingly less people. Land Rover couldn’t even managed to sell 5000 vehicles in 2022 - the brand was so on-the-nose they lost 32 per cent of their also crap sales of 2021 when 6500 vehicles was unachievable.
Google the words ‘Sally Morphy Range Rover’ to find out why; they did behave like such abject bastards to Miss Morphy too. That was pretty much a clear case of smoke being the harbinger of fire.
TFL Studios’ multi-Defender reports probably didn't help either, particularly the part where the world realised how pathetically fragile their flagship off-road hero actually was thanks to a dealership simply nicking a wiring harness to fit a bullbar/winch and the whole car had to be thrown away. True story. Couldn't be repaired. Good reasons to NOT buy a Land Rover in Australia >>
Not exactly the old Defender, is it?
It's taken Land Rover’s latest owners, the multinational Indian industrial conglomerate Tata, 14 years to turn an unreliable, badly supported British icon into an irrelevant, overpriced unreliable and badly supported British icon.
Well done. Five years ago, in 2018, just over 13,000 Australians bought into this Green Oval hype. Last year, exactly 4348. That's what a catastrophic collapse actually looks like.
4. SUBARU
Subaru, it pains me to point this out - it really does. Having been the proud and somewhat satisfied owner of two brand new WRXs which I loved, a Forester XT which I loved, and also a base model Outback which, in an odd way, I loved also - that was some time ago, and in the past five years things have gotten heavy at the bow.
This is the Subaru people want…
2018 - 2022 has not been good for Subaru, with 52,500 sales reduced to just 36,000 in that time. More than anything else, I blame evil Toyota accountants and corporate executives for this, because Toyota owns roughly 20 per cent of Subaru. In fact, when they upped their stake in Subaru recently, Subaru officially became part of the Toyota Group - that occurred on the 10th of February in 2020. T’was a very sad day. Note the correlation: Greater Toyota ownership, fewer Subaru sales.
Toyota is gonna obviously continue to metastasize through Subaru, meaning rob the excitement from a brand born from rallying, mud and adrenaline, and they're going to turn it into what Toyota has always been - boring as batshit. Toyota bean counters will do what they do best, which is just keep cutting out any passion and just replacing it with aspirations of mediocrity at best. I mean, just look at every Subaru TV commercial right now - yawn.
This is the best we can hope for, and the writing of this process is on the wall. It's been on the wall for ages, but I'll just give you some waypoints so you can identify it.
The appalling CVT transmissions - when we left behind conventional automatics and basically said goodbye to manuals and just all drove CVT Subarus; no more Forester XT; no more WRX STI in the current generation (the ultimate halo car - what were they thinking?!); the complete botch of the first and only Subaru Levorg; long delays getting the 2.4 turbo engine in Outback for Australia for nearly three years, and when it finally lobs next year, guess what - it's too little too late.
Is it any wonder sales are off a fricken cliff?
Answer: No.
3. Sick with The Benz
The poop emoji bronze medal for abject automotive commercial sickness goes to my dear friends Mercedes-Benz - good old Three Prong.
Oh Lord, don't you buy me this shitbox Benz with appalling customer care and even worst product reliability. That's a song sung by 10,000 fewer people in 2022 compared with 2017. That's a lot of rich masturbators to turn away from a brand. Ask Jeep or Land Rover how that feels, Three Prong.
Sales have more than tanked. Imagine that after boning the entire dealer network and then getting sued by them for $650 million (for the evisceration of any goodwill left in their business model) despite three-prong telling us out here in the world that the dealers were completely on board with it. It’s still before the court, so no determination's been made.
Then, as a consequence of all of these shenanigans, they invoke their Shit Price Promise. That's Mercedes-Benz’s real commitment to you - the rock solid promise that you will pay the highest possible price no matter how hard you try to negotiate.
Every BMW dealer says ‘thanks and Happy New Year’, and doubtless Audi will also if they ever manage to emerge from that troublesome coma. If their new business strategy is so good, then why couldn’t The Benz move more than 27,000 cars in 2022? They managed just 26,000.
Not only was the year down over 15 per cent compared with 2021 (I mean, they couldn’t even top the year of lockdowns), but December 2022 was a particularly dud month - down 5.5 per cent for just 1586 cars - that’s about 24 cars per dealership. Or, less than one car per day per dealership. Not many buying a Mercedes-Benz for Christmas, as it turns out.
2. Honda back foot - will Honda Australia fold?
The silver medal for shit sales, the number two in number twos, is Honda by a nose. This is a real achievement.
New CR-V trying really hard to look relevant.
Most fundamentally incompetent multinational management teams would be unable to turn the inventor of VTEC into a complete corporate basket case and yet, this is exactly what has happened.
What Honda has done to itself seemingly without effort (much like their SUV product), in the space of fewer than two decades is turn the name Honda into a sideshow. The circus has moved on and all the good cars do not come out of Honda anymore, unless you’re a strict enthusiast. So well done there.
Here in Australia, of course, Honda has just completed the first full year of its own crap price promise experiment after it boned its dealers and closed all those dealerships, then reorganized the hair and makeup, and made a whole bunch of butt-squeezing corporate decisions in the board room at Tullamarine thinking, ‘Yeah, that'll work.’
The numbers are in and it hasn't worked. In fact, Honda’s had the worst sales performance on record, as in since the 90s when records for this kind of thing were kept here in Australia, for the first time, for at least 20 years.
You've got to remember Honda had a seat at the top 10 table among carmakers, and in fact Australian sales peaked at 60,500 back in 2007, around the same time as the GFC. Then of course the GFC hit us all - Honda included - and what Honda did was it just stuck its head in the sand, globally.
Honda stopped innovating and basically became the basket case that we see today with just over 14,000 sales in Australia during 2022, which is less than 25 per cent of where they were in their heyday - back when they were in fact widely viewed as the BMW of the East. Now?
Forty seven thousand dollars entry price for a base Civic.
In today’s economic situation, that probably hasn't helped in addition to the crap price promise. But then again, Honda hasn’t prepared for the winter of our/your discontent.
1. NISSAN - innovation that’s extinct
The top honour goes to Nissan, because 2022 was complete bastard for Nissan Australia.
Take my word for it, it's bad: a 36 per cent year-on-year sales collapse from full 2022 versus 2021. Wow - 36 per cent down off the back of a cascading cavalcade of year-on-year lemming-like sales collapses. If you want to see how profound that is, you have to go back about 10 years, because 10 years ago Nissan Australia sales they nudged 80,000. Nissan Australia was once a monolith brand - 80,000 sales is like Mazda and half of Hyundai’s typical annual sales.
Last year, 26,000 is the best they could do. Holy Shiite. This is essentially what a decade of terrible products and an utter indifference about innovation, and other general mismanagement, actually buys you in the car industry. It's so fricken competitive, it's not as if you leave a void and you tell yourself you’ll get back to that position - it's not going to remain a void for a nanosecond; someone's going to move in and I don't know, MG or Kia or someone of that nature is doing what Nissan used to do.
It's fascinating to me to see the parallels between Nissan and Honda, because on fundamentals: where they were, where they are today, the passion they had, the passion they have - today they're marching in lockstep over this cliff. Maybe they’re following Holden.
It's amazing to me that not one but two of these great Japanese carmakers have fallen so far so quickly - the only difference between them is of course the scandal that is inherent in the fall of Nissan.
For Honda, it's almost just like apathy did Honda the slow, poisonous death, whereas scandal and political infighting has been one of the main drivers (or is that destroyers) for Nissan. If you want to look at where Nissan was, an emblematic moment for me was when Carlos Gohan was at the top.
Ghosn was playing his best game ever. He was a wheel at Renault, then he moved to Nissan and he became a full-on rockstar. This is an inherent contradiction when you look at him, when you look at the physicality and the aesthetics - he had none of the rock star aesthetic, and he did it, despite that.
Everyone hung off every one of his words - he was the automotive Messiah and I was one of the people who viewed him that way at the time. I remember his absolute crowning moment was at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show. There was this extensive spectacular reveal of the R35 GTR. Then he got to drive it out onto the stage, there's 800 journalists all packed around, Ghosn jumps out and he said:
“What you hear is the roar of Nissan's passion for performance. What you see is its ultimate physical expression.”
The last time Nissan pushed the envelope to build something right on the edge of what was technically possible.
There were 800 pairs of journalistic trousers doing strange things around that stage. Interestingly enough, Simon Sproul who was a senior of global PR for Nissan at the time, he refers to that speech in that moment as, “Peak Ghosn”.
That's when Nissan had that spark.
That's what Nissan was and that's why I'm so critical of them for what they've become. They could’ve maintained themselves up high. But if you fast forward 12 years and you think about Ghosn himself 12 years later, he's under indictment in Japan, he gets released under house arrest and he hires a team of former Special Operations dudes to smuggle him out (in a cello case) of the country (Japan) where he would be facing almost-certain life imprisonment because: Japan has a 97 percent conviction rate.
He's now of course living in exile, in Lebanon, still a rockstar to the Lebanese at least.
If you look at the product range today, particularly in Australia, it's got no passion, and its ultimate physical expression today is more like aspiring to mediocrity. Every vehicle in the line-up all of Nissan's current vehicle inventory is objectively inferior to its competition; you can crunch the numbers, you don't even have to drive the vehicles.
The one exception is the ‘current’ Patrol, which is as old as the hills. It's very old, but still quite capable of hardcore performance and of course it's heaps cheaper than a 300 Series Land Cruiser. The reason it still works in the market today is because Nissan designed and built that thing with passion. That 5.6-litre V8 is smooth and powerful and hurls the 2.7 tonne behemoth up the road - and they keep adding bits to it to keep it modern.
But everything else Nissan sells is just pathetic. Leaf electric vehicle, for example, it’s outclassed by basically every other EV; the X-Trail is essentially a half-arsed attempted at being a mid-sized SUV with at-best a hateful CVT; the so-called ‘new’ Pathfinder has that awful, heavy, gutless V6 from the last one.
Now we get this lump of recycled excrement.
They're not really selling an ‘all new’ Pathfinder; anything with the words e-Power in Nissan's line-up is like a bunch of engineers got together and they built a battery-hybrid alternative ‘green’ vehicle type of powertrain, but with lower inherent efficiency than just a standard internal combustion powertrain.
Great work Nissan, if that was your engineering objective.
Mazda3 should make you reconsider that heavy, impractical SUV or the long list of overpriced prestige German cars. If you’re money smart, you’ll put this sensible, stylish small hatch or sedan on your shortlist for a test drive.