Cadillac ATS sales in December hit 3,887 units, Cadillac’s best selling car. The mighty Cadillac SRX sold 6,087 units, almost 1/3 of sales for the month! Some lucky Cadillac Drivers had a lovely Christmas.
CTS and XTS sales were on par, and Escalade continued to hover just over 2K units.
The new ELR extended range electric Cadillac is just arriving to dealers; 6 were sold in December at first availability.
| December | (Calendar Year-to-Date) | |||||||
| January – December | ||||||||
| 2013 | 2012 | %Change Volume | 2013 | 2012 | %Change Volume | |||
| ATS | 3,887 | 2,979 | 30.5 | 38,319 | 7,008 | 446.8 | ||
| CTS | 3,217 | 3,372 | -4.6 | 32,343 | 46,979 | -31.2 | ||
| DTS | 0 | 0 | ***.* | 19 | 465 | -95.9 | ||
| ELR | 6 | 0 | ***.* | 6 | 0 | ***.* | ||
| Escalade | 1,470 | 1,371 | 7.2 | 12,592 | 12,615 | -0.2 | ||
| Escalade ESV | 775 | 927 | -16.4 | 7,950 | 8,083 | -1.6 | ||
| Escalade EXT | 66 | 256 | -74.2 | 1,972 | 1,934 | 2.0 | ||
| SRX | 6,074 | 6,400 | -5.1 | 56,776 | 57,485 | -1.2 | ||
| STS | 0 | 4 | ***.* | 7 | 164 | -95.7 | ||
| XTS | 2,670 | 2,939 | -9.2 | 32,559 | 15,049 | 116.4 | ||
| Cadillac Total* | 18,165 | 18,248 | -0.5 | 182,543 | 149,782 | 21.9 | ||
Of note in the overall GM brand news:
- The Chevrolet Corvette had its best December sales since 2006.
- Crossover and SUV sales were strong, with the Chevrolet Traverse and Tahoe, and the GMC Acadia and Yukon XL all posting higher sales. The Acadia was up 53 percent, for its best-ever December.
- Small business customers took delivery of 26,231 vehicles in December up 20 percent. For the year, small business deliveries were up 35 percent.
Summary
“December started a little slow but sales were stronger later in the month, especially in the week between Christmas and New Year’s,” McNeil said. “We didn’t make any big changes to our ‘go-to-market’ strategy during the month, which is to offer competitive incentives and market aggressively, and we are carrying good momentum heading into January.”
Cadillac overall is doing well, but not nearly as well as they should be doing. ATS sales need to be 9K+ units per month to compete well against BMW 3-Series, or over 5K units per month to meet what I think was Cadillac’s original target. The ATS needs a serious pricing move — make the mid-line 2L Turbo the standard ATS, and reduce the price to $29,995 for that configuration. Keep the 3.6L as the Premium, but pull the price down $10K as well. Tune the 2L Turbo to 300+ HP (easy) and push the 3.6L to 350 hp (harder?). If necessary make the 3.6L Turbo the Premium engine (a low-pressure variant at 420 HP), and use a high-tuned 475 hp variant in the ATS-V. These seem like BIG moves, but we will need BIG moves to get the sales numbers up a factor of 3. Every month Cadillac waits they are missing opportunities for expanding their customer base.
