Ford tops list of best-positioned brand

“What a difference a year makes,” says Dennis DesRosiers, after revealing Toyota and Honda’s respective drops in his annual trendsetter survey of dealers.

Each year PriceWaterhouseCoopers, DesRosiers Automotive Consultants and Chuck Seguin survey all new vehicle dealers in Canada trying to get at issues important to the dealer body.

This year marks the 17 version and the full results are published each year in the CADA – Year in Review.

Ahead of the official release, DesRosiers reveals the answers to what are the three best-positioned brands according to surveyed dealers.

In 2009, respondents positioned Toyota/Lexus followed by Honda/Acura and then Hyundai as the best positioned brands. They now list Ford as the best-positioned brand in Canada and General Motors the second best positioned brand.

“Ford is easy to understand since they are on such a role in the market and dealers love a winner,” DesRosiers writes. “But GM is more interesting in that they lost market share last year and were in turmoil with their dealers for most of the year.”

What the dealers (including non-GM dealers) may be saying is that they liked the moves by GM this past year to consolidate brands and to terminate these brands at 242 stores, which resulted in the permanent closure of 159 GM stores, the statement continues.

“Toyota and Honda falling back is obviously related to their problems in the market and how they have handled these problems at the factory.”
 
The other interesting difference between the last two years is how spread out the results were this year compared to a year ago. Last year they were much more committed to the top brands where as this year the percentage listing each top brand is much smaller.

Also interesting to note that Chrysler, which did not even crack the Top 10 last year, ranked 6th this year pushing Mercedes-Benz out.


Results in Order
Ford
General Motors
Toyota/Lexus
Hyundai
Honda/Acura
Chrysler
BMW/Mini
Nissan/Infiniti
VW/Audi
Kia