Honda Civic Tops November Sales in the Compact Car Segment

Civil said:

Hadn't really considered that. I guess I just automatically thought this would be numbers for the new model, but you are right old models are also included in this.

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Yes, but considering that Honda does not offer any incentives when compared to Ford, Nissan and Toyota, for example, this is great. And even so, they still discounted less than every one else. Check this out below:

"Incentives" include the cash-back and cheap-financing offers that are often heavily advertised on TV and online. They're funded by the automakers, and they cut directly into profits.

That doesn't automatically make them bad: Customers have come to expect some level of incentives (or put another way, everybody likes to get a "great deal" on a new car). A vehicle's pricing will generally take some level of incentives into consideration. (That's especially true on pickup trucks, where four-figure discounts are just part of doing business.)

But the difference here is pretty dramatic. According to estimates from TrueCar, Nissan paid out a whopping $3,577 per sale in incentives last month. That's far above the payouts from both Toyota and Honda. In fact, it's more typical of levels seen from the Detroit automakers. (Their average incentives are generally high because all three sell lots of pickups.)

But Toyota also gave its incentives a boost last month, with a package that included "zero-percent" financing on its top-selling Camry sedan. TrueCar estimates that Toyota's average payout was $2,204 in November. That's far behind Nissan's, but it's up almost 14% from what Toyota was paying a year ago.

Meanwhile, Honda paid out a relatively meager $1,931, down 6.3% from a year ago, according to TrueCar estimates. But it may have had two good reasons for its relative stinginess.

The truth is this, if every compact car sold for the same price, and you excluded all fleet sales (sales to rental companies, taxis, etc, which Honda does not take a part in), it would not even be close. Honda would not be able to keep up with demand.