AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)01/02 Report--

In the second year of continuous decline in the 2019 market, luxury brands have shown a rising trend. As Cadillac's biggest competitor, Lexus has become the most outstanding luxury brand this year. But this year's Cadillac showed a year-on-year decline, only about 10, 000 more sales than Lexus "narrowly win".

According to the latest figures released by Cadillac, its cumulative sales in December were 17707, down 17.05% from a year earlier, and 212507 for the whole year, down 6.7% from a year earlier. It is worth noting that Cadillac has sold less than Lexus for three months in a row, with cumulative sales of 11986 vehicles more than Lexus for the whole of last year. It is conceivable that in 2018, Cadillac surpassed Lexus by nearly 70, 000 vehicles, or about 1/3.

There was also a reason for the poor performance of Cadillac last year. The ATSL and XTS, which used to be the most popular models, were unable to be listed in many parts of the country after the implementation of the national five-to-six policy in June last year, so they failed to "compete" for the whole year, and sales fell all the way after the second half of the year. It is worth noting that ATS-L and XTS brought more than 50% of Cadillac sales in 2018, totaling more than 120000 vehicles.

Because of the suspension of the two cars, Cadillac has less competition for two market segments, which is only for the CT6 model, but this area is not Cadillac's best performing market segment. CT6, a medium and large sedan, sold a total of 22637 cars in 2019, an increase of 31.4% over the same period last year.

Notably, the model was urgently recalled by GM, which said it could cause the car's electronic stability control or anti-lock braking system to fail, and the vehicle's diagnostic system would not turn on the alarm lights on the dashboard. Dealers are required to rewrite the software to solve this problem.

Cadillac can't perform on sedan models, so Cadillac can only make up for it on the SUV model. Coupled with the launch of XT6 in July this year, Cadillac has completed the layout of various market segments in the SUV sector, so the SUV sector has performed well. Medium and large SUV XT6 sold a total of 110.53 million vehicles for the whole year; medium-sized SUV XT5 sold 57317 vehicles, but it was down 21.9% from 73400 last year, while the compact SUV XT4 became the only increased SUV model, with cumulative sales of 47054 vehicles, up 209.9% from a year earlier, also because the new car was just coming out at this time last year.

It can be said that 2019 is the product year of Cadillac, with the discontinuation of ATS-L and XTS, the launch of a brand new medium-sized sedan CT5, and the launch of a new midsize sedan CT4. Although Cadillac says this is not a replacement for the former, the layout means "replacement" in terms of formation.

CT5, which was supposed to be listed a month earlier, was scheduled to appear on the market on November 18. of course, as a new model, it was also favored by many consumers. 6191cars were sold in less than two months. It is believed that there are still many consumers waiting for its price reduction. After the replacement, the product power has been improved, but the price has failed to reach the ideal position of consumers. Once there is a discount. It is believed that this model can become the sales support of Cadillac, as seen from the current performance of netizens.

This year, Cadillac has basically completed the product plastic layout, in the case of no car model, only slightly ahead of Lexus, perhaps Cadillac's terminal discount before the policy, prompting it to take the lead in sales, so that Lexus, which has been growing for months in a row, has not been able to achieve a reverse lead.

In any case, 2019 is a market for luxury brands and may still be in the future. As Hu Jianping, deputy director of the Market Construction Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said, domestic consumers are upgrading their consumer demand for cars, gradually shifting from low-end homogenized products to middle-and high-end personalized products, from product consumption to equal emphasis on product and service consumption.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat