July 2009 was a good month for the xD. Sales were down only 3.0% from this time last year. Pretty good—the best showing in months! Unfortunately, sales are still down 57.4% overall from last year.

http://www.subcompactculture.com/200...act-sales.html

 

wow that bad that more smart cars are sold than the xD. I guess Hyundai actually profited from their Hyundai assurance program.










Make/Model
July '09 vs July '08Year to dateCars sold in '09 to dateHyundai Accent
+13.3%
+16.1%
45,622
Nissan Versa
-2.0%-25.6%40,399
Scion xD
-3.0%-57.4%7,717
MINI (all)
-3.8%-18.1%25,757Suzuki SX4
-24.0%-39.0%12,612
Honda Fit
-27.6%-25.4%38,598
Chevrolet Aveo
-31.2%
-55.3%
16,847
Toyota Yaris
-36.4%-39.5%44,081Smart (all)
-44.6%-28.5%9,985Kia Rio
-53.6%-45.4%13,461Kia Soul--
--
16,027
Nissan Cube
----7,175
Pontiac G3
----2,315

 

I won't know why the xD doesn't sell well. It a great car for the money, I would have got one but I needed something a little bigger (reason why I went with the xB2). And the motor in the xD has poential written all over it.

 

I am one of those people who bought one in July.

I wonder why it doesn't sell well too. The engine is more powerful than Honda Fit, gets great MPG compared to other compact car.
And it's Made in Japan. Can't beat these advantage.

 

Ok, fast forward to August.

Mom went in to look at the xD and to TRY to buy one. She just wanted auto and VSC.

First Scion dealer in the Marietta GA. area, had NONE on the lot. Second dealer, north in Rome, had NONE on the lot and tried to push her into a Corolla.

A quick check on-line of the Scion inventory in the Southeast, showed 4 cars with the options she wanted out of a total of 178 cars available in that region. The next day, they had sold 35 xD's in the southeast region with the same 4 VSC equipped cars still available.

Not one dealer was willing to do a dealer trade or try to get a single car in for her to look at. The one dealer even said, "Miss, the cash for clunker program has so many people buying, that if you do not buy one off the lot, someone else will." The other Scion dealer told her they keep an inventory of 250 cars on the lot, they are down to 40 and have no idea when they will get more.

Another Scion dealer told her to wait until the 2010's come out then come back, or else buy a Corolla S for $19,000 now.

Bottom line:

1- xD's are hard to find in the southeast.
2- Dealers are overrun with people buying. In fact, at one dealership, she could not find parking, and the salesman was working 3 customers at once.
3- Cash for clunkers is an overwhelming success.
4- Because of their new found wealth, salesmen have become rude.
5- My Mom can't even buy a xD, and might have to settle with a Corolla off the lot.

 

I bought mine before Clunker Program became well known, so fortunately I didn't run into those rude salesman. But man, I wish there is some message board to rate these dealers like Amazon review, no one should go thru the crap some of those salesman put customers thru, and that was before clunker program.

I still have dealers emailed me if I want to buy a car from Toyota and Honda, so I wonder if some salesman are still "nice".


When I bought mine ScionXD, the dealer has about 10 left, with various option installed that you can choose from. You hear in media how Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla is hot seller, I was thinking if Scion was left cold in the corner with no one touching. But I guess it's selling out too.

But I can't imagine this Clunker craze can keep going. It's not like the supply of Clunker is infinite, once people trade in their old car, that is it.

 

http://tinyurl.com/nhxqgb < a ton of sites that do dealer ratings.

Also, don't worry about those salesman who are being rude during the clunkers deal, they'll get theirs when they don't make sales for 6 months after the clunkers money runs out.

 

Do these sales worry anyone else besides me? I feel the resale value of my XD must be falling through the floor.

Also I'm amazed on a search on Auto Trader how used 2008 XD's can have a higher sticker price than a brand new 2009 XD.

 

well was looking at grabbing another xd (wasabi) on sunday there was 5 auto's and 2 5-speed. as of the other day all but one 5-speed was left. and all the other colors were selling out. i guess it has to do with the clunker program.

 

Cash for Clunkers is why I bought mine...

Back story - I was a dedicated Honda guy for most of my adult life - started out with an '83 Civic, then an '89, then a '97 EX, then a '03 Si. Got in a nasty wreck in '03 with the Si (broadsided on the passenger side by an old Dodge Diplomat, right at the B pillar) and it was totaled. My mom had a '97 Blazer she never drove and I got it for the price of a plane ticket to Chicago to drive it back home. Drove it for 3 years, put 30K on it and $6K in to it because it had never been driven and was falling apart faster than I could fix it.

Met my sales rep an Earnhardt in Superstition Springs (best rep I've ever had, bar none, PM if you're in the market and would like a referral) and he had my RS2 XD and that was it. At the end of the day, the price was great and I took it home.

 

Since my post the other day, the best I can figure out, they sold 70 xD's in the southeast region. They are going like hotcakes !!!

As for my Mom, no xD's to look at. Dealers are too busy to get one for her.

One Corolla S on the lot, and if she doesn't want it at sticker, someone else does. She was told to wait for the '10's.

Cash for Clunkers has turned the hungry, begging salespeople of a month ago, into rude rich people.

 

My local Cerritos Toytoa dealer offered to have free "perma plate" treatment when we bought the car. He gave us a yellow slip that even said that, valid for two more weeks at this point. Just call the number to service dept. to make an appointment, he said.

What happened? I called the number, no one ever picked up the phone, whether it's 9 am or 2 pm. I left 3 messages already, no one ever called back (I left messages with my home #, cell #). No reply. Honestly, at this point, I am not sure if I want to hand them my car and let them even touch it. They probably got a lot of people bought car from them, and now they just say to hell with what we promised, we are selling cars like hot cakes!

For next car, I am likely to get a Honda Civic....I mean I got my ScionXD fine, but I dont' want to deal with this Toyota dealer again. And I'll do it once there is NO more clunkers from customers for them, back to things were pre-July cirra.

 

Too bad you're in PA - my local dealer got 2 more XDs in - blue and a RS2 automatic. Great sales rep too - guy bent over backwards for me to make things happen.

 

Any car dealer u go to will be like this right now. It sucks for loyal customers to get shafted cause they dont drive a heap of crap trying to get govt money for it, but since its a govt program dealers will only face harder times if they ignore it and so on. Sad thing is we're all going to be paying for the crappy program in taxes in due time. Go USA

 

I'd rather my taxes go to programs that help lessen our dependence on oil than the last 9 years of a war we never belonged in in the first place.

Here's my thing on the "my tax dollars" argument - I'm a single guy with no kids, which means I pay higher taxes than any other classification. MY tax dollars have paid for plenty of things over the last 25 years from which I see NO direct benefit, including the aforementioned Iraq debacle.

 

I'm of the belief that these 3 points are holding back the xD:

1) In the current market NO-ONE wants to pay retail for any car.When so many car manufactures are slashing prices to stay in business. Fewer people are willing to pay the full retail that Scions Pure pricing effectively is.

2) Toyota doesn't care that much if xD sales slide. With the economy in the crapper, the dollar gets weaker against the yen and Toyota makes less $$$ on every car they import. For Toyota its way better to sell an American made Corolla than an xD.

3) The average customer will see the 1,100$ difference in cost between the xD and the xB as money well spent.A bigger car with a bigger engine makes more people happy than car that does 9/10ths the job with 20% more efficiency.

 

It was a good month for the xD:

"Toyota saw surprisingly little C4C help in Yaris sales, which fell 47 percent to under 5k units. Corolla, Camry and Prius all increased by 51.9 percent, 28.2 percent and 45.7 percent respectively. Scion’s xB got a three percent lift and xD got a 15 percent lift, with both remaining well under 5k units."



http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/hon...up-64-percent/

 

From the horse's mouth:
http://www.helloscion.com/Home/Scion...Aug_Sales.aspx

 

Just wanted to post a great success story in response to the folks who've had to work with poor dealerships.

I bought my xD in May. It was the only manual left on the lot, and luckily it was the color I wanted (black sand pearl, woo). I was all but treated like royalty. The salesman was gracious, they offered us drinks while we ran through the paperwork, and though I was there in the evening and it was past closing time by the time we were done, no one complained about staying late. In fact, the salesman and finance rep apologized for keeping us.

For anyone near the Quad Cities, I highly recommend Hiland Toyota/Scion in Moline IL. Feel free to PM me for contact info for the salesman I worked with. They only appear to have 1 xD in stock right now, but I'm sure they would work with you to order one.

 

Well, here's my two cents on this;

Last August, when we bought my xD, the dealer I bought it at was sweet as pie through the whole process and even emailed a follow up afterwards. At the time, gas was near record highs, and the economy was sliding in the crapper. There were maybe 2 customers there the whole time we waited to sign and drive away.

Fast forward almost 1 yr to the day; Wife fell in love with the FJ Cruiser, so we set out looking for her a new FJ. Called the same dealer we bought our xD from. He welcomed us, said the FJ's are tough to find and he would see what he could locate. Granted, we wanted a certain color, so it was a long shot since they suspended production on them and at the time only 5 new 09's were available within 300 miles.

We maintained contact, and I also searched high and low in the meantime. Cash for clunkers had rumors of ending and people flocked into dealers trading in their garb, and contact ended....... I emailed him, stating where we wanted our payments at, and his reply was "I can't get you that" and "good luck finding your FJ". WTF???

My wife read it and ripped him a new one, saying so much for helping your return customers. He replied with a generic sorry, and good luck.

Not to be denied her new FJ, we emailed another dealer across town from him. I get a quick response, and "I will see what we can find". Within a day, he calls to say he located the exact car we wanted and he would have to do a dealer trade to get it, do we want it? August 18th we drove our new FJ home! Who do you think her first email was to

The day we picked it up, the lot was packed with clunker-ites, but we were treated like we were the only ones there.

Bottom line, in my oppinion, new car buying sucks! But, some salesman and dealers can handle pressure better than others. And this experience showed me who couldn't!