I didn't see this posted elsewhere. The "TruckTrend" blog claims that at the start of 2009, Mazda had a 286(!) day supply of RX-8 on hand. Link here.

 

From Trucktrend's website from provided link

"At the start of 2009, the days supply (a measure of how many vehicles a manufacturer has in inventory related to sales rate—60 is ideal, lower indicates it could be in demand) of new vehicles in the U.S. had not been affected by the first rounds of government assistance. Since truck and big-vehicle production were slowed by last summer's gas prices and the tanking economy, and the economy and winter hit convertibles and playthings particularly hard, inventory wasn't tied up in trucks. The top five vehicles for having a low days supply were the Yukon XL (35 days), BMW X3/5/6 (37), E-Series/Club Wagon (39), Escalade ESV (45), and the Volvo XC90 (47). At the other extreme, Honda had a yearlong supply of S2000 inventory (361 days), followed by the Mazda Tribute (301), Mazda RX-8 (286), Saturn Sky (284), and Mazda MX-5 (274)."


So I'm assuming they mean that there are 286 RX-8's produced for every 1 RX-8 sold?

 

For some reason I can't understand what they mean by all those days... someone explain please

 

i'll gladly take one of them 09 RX-8's off their inventory if they sell it to me for 19k, lol

 

Wow 285 day supply?!?!! When I worked at a Toyota dealership, we worked with a 30 day supply....

 

My guess it means that if the factory was to stop production they wouldn't have to make a new RX-8 for 285 days?
That is based on current demand and the number of unsold RX-8's.

RX-8 sales have been very low since 2005. In Feb 2009 155 RX-8 were sold in North America in Feb. Feb 08 wasn't good either, we drive a very rare car.

 

Yeah I get it now. I'm guessing Civic's plan a 20 day cycle.

 

Well, I wouldn't quite say that. Honda's got 10,000 cars in deep freeze at an old Ford plant in Lorain, Ohio.

In general, the Japanese badly overproduced through the start of the year, as opposed to the American auto makers who were much more realistic about what their inventories were going to be versus sales. Of course, when demand for products drops 49% year over year, it's hard to cut production that fast.

EDIT: Oh, and Expo is right on what those numbers mean. Sorry, I figured everyone would know. I'd seen figures like that many times before with Saturn!

 

If you want an '09, just have patience. They will end up almost having to "give" them away to get rid of them.

 

So Honda can actually give the S2000 another model year run with the current inventory of that car. heh!
Mind you, inventory is calculated in snapshots. One cannot just sum them up over time. The E-class/wagon seems to indicate that it is a healthy car by the days supply. It can also be that the snapshot taken shows after production of that car has probably halted a year ago and that at this moment, the inventory for the E-class has dwindled to 39 days of supply. <shrug>

 

the issue was car manufactures were using "worst case scenarios" for this years production. Too bad their worst case did not include what the world economy currently looks like. It's also the double edged sword of running very lean supply chains, you can't just slam on the brakes to slow down production.

To keep inventory of parts low you are basically turning your suppliers into warehouses. In exchange for that you have to guarantee them a certain amount of parts purchased in a given time frame. It's nearly impossible to tell your supplier "we're forecasting a 40 percent drop in sales so we need you to cut production by 40 percent." And since no one expected sales to drop as badly as they did, i'm sure they sugar-coated it as best they could.

 

Well, I helped Mazda with that figure last Wednesday when I took a Sparkling Black Mica GT from the lot of Crippen Mazda here in Lansing! I'm in love with it. Is dry humping a car a mortal sin?

 

Nah, it's when you stick it in the tailpipe, though....

 

+1 That's when it goes from "weird" to "wrong"!

 

This certainly isn't good news, but you have to remember that these numbers are calculated as snapshots, and sports cars/convertibles always have bad Days Supply numbers this time of year.

Automakers ramp up production of these cars in the Winter and they always sell many more in the Spring/Summer than they do any other time of the year. So, when you look at March you see a high number sitting in inventory and very few sold per day. This means your Days Supply looks like crap. But when Spring comes along and people are buying sports cars again, and especially convertibles whose sales completely dry up when its cold, the number drops in a hurry because your cars sold per day goes up a huge amount, sometimes 3, 4, 5 times or more. Suddenly that 250+ Day Supply turns into 100 or 60 or even less.

Not saying that will necessarily happen here to that magnitude. But I'm sure RX-8 sales will bump at least a little as it warms up, MX-5 sales most certainly will increase a very large amount, percentage-wise at least, if not in absolute numbers.

Look at it in absolute numbers:

Mazda sold a measly 6 RX-8s per day in February.

So a 285-day supply would mean there must be about 1700 in inventory around the country. That doesn't seem so bad. In the grand scheme of the company that's not all that bad at all. Even now Mazda is continuing to sell about 800 cars a day in the US -- so the total number of RX-8s is only 2-days sales.

 

The Japanese cars have to be shipped to the US which takes time. They will have to keep more on hand than N.A. made cars.

 

Nobody is buying that S2K. I wonder if used prices are as depressed as our 8s.

 

About 150 RX-8's are selling in the US per month...that is 5 a day.

If there is a 286 days supply of the RX-8, then there would be a total of 1430 units.

To me that appears to be perhaps inaccurate, would MNAO plus Dealers have that much stock of the RX-8?

 

Worse. In Canada, Honda sold a total of 65 S2000 in all of 2008. Yes sixty five in an entire year. Very Fail.
Put it this way, the CDN$210,000 R8 sold more than the S2000 in 2008 alone.

 

I don't doubt it.

A quick search of a 250-mile radius (biggest you can do on Mazda's site) around major US cities in Florida, Texas, New York, Southern California, and Washington found over 500 in dealer inventory. Texas alone has almost 200.

Figure in the rest of the nation plus, undoubtedly, a whole lot sitting on MNAO lots not yet in dealer inventory plus some in-transit which likely count in inventory, and it's not hard at all to imagine there being 1500 in inventory.

 

Without a seasonal adjustment, these statistics are only meanigful for winter. Once it warms up, SUV sales will go down, sports cars will go up. So, there should be some really good deals on Tributes to be had in the near future.

 

Total for 2008 3,368

It does go up in the summer time (2008).

June: 333
July: 355
August: 355

 

How should this data be interpreted by a modern day rotary driver? I see nothing of impact.

 

Low demand + High Supply = poor support from the aftermarket & Mazda. Nissan sold 10,337 350z in 2008 compared to 3,368 RX-8. The Z has a fresh new model this year, and much greater options aftermarket mods wise. Unless this trend changes how long can mazda continue to spend money on a model that sells less than 4,000 units a year?

 

+1

If Mazda would support the Rx-8 more ...