After seeing a 40 percent sales surge in the first 10 days of March compared to a year earlier, Toyota may soon decide to continue its first extensive zero-percent financing offers beyond this month.
The automobile giant’s troubles have not abated following the recall of millions of top-selling vehicles for unintended acceleration issues, and yesterday a lawsuit filed by Orange County, Calif. prosecutors accused Toyota of unfair business practices.
But since offering zero-percent financing and free-maintenance deals on Camry and other models at the beginning of the month, Toyota sales have made big strides, prompting General Motors and Ford to pump up their own discount programs.
Don Esmond, senior vice president of Toyota U.S. sales, told Reuters in an interview, that the car company would evaluate this month’s results and customer responses before making a final decision on extending the incentives.
“We’ll continue to keep the dealers competitive in the marketplace,” Esmond is quoted by Reuters as saying. “I think we will have to take a look at results and reevaluate, but the promise I made to dealers was that we will continue to make them competitive.”
As figures are compiled, though, it is becoming clear that the incentives are getting results.
Toyota’s daily retail sales rate is running at about 47 percent higher than the same period last year, and about 71 percent higher than last month, according to Edmunds.com, the automotive resource site.
And Toyota’s retail market share has rebounded to 16.8 percent so far this month, up 10 percent from last March’s 15.2 percent — and up 31 percent from 12.8 percent last month, Edmunds said.
Meanwhile, the auto giant has to contend with the first lawsuit filed by a U.S. , state or local prosecutor. The Orange County civil suit accuses Toyota of knowingly “selling and leasing hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks with defects that cause sudden unexpected and uncontrollable acceleration.”
