Hummer and Saturn may reside in the same General Motors’ family but the two brands couldn’t be farther apart. While Saturn dealers saw a dramatic increase in the number of new vehicle retail registrations per franchise in 2007, the Hummer brand showed the biggest drop off in the entire industry.
According to Automotive News, the average Saturn dealer tallied 479 new registrations in 2007 — an improve of 55 from the year before. In fact, that 55 unit improvement ties BMW for the largest gain in the industry.
But whereas Saturn is showing some of the strong sales in the brand’s history, Hummer has greatly fallen out of favor with new car shoppers. In 2007, the average Hummer franchise accounted for 285 registrations — a 90 unit decrease from the year before. The only other automaker that saw a similar drop was Honda ’s Acura division, which tumbled by 89 registrations.
Hummer chalks up the decline to a sagging SUV market and steep fuel prices.
Overall, import brands faired far better in registrations per franchise than the domestic automakers because of their smaller dealer networks. For example, Toyota sold about as many cars as Ford last year — if you include Ford’s import brands — but Toyota averaged 1,628 registrations per franchise and Ford only averaged 236 — a statistic that really exemplifies how over bloated the domestic automaker’s dealership network really is.
Largely because of an overgrown network, no domestic brand cracked the top 10. However, two domestic marques found themselves in the bottom 10 — Mercury and Buick — which is largely populated by low-volume exotic brands and the lame-duck Isuzu brand.
