Houston DMA - diverse automotive market summary

To help the public gain insight into the impact diverse market customers (African American, Asian and Hispanic) are having on the U.S. light vehicle industry, this is the ninth installment in a series of blogs focused on the Top U.S. markets based on volume year-to-date (YTD) through June 2011.

The focus of this blog is the Houston market, also known as "Space City" for its ties to NASA, "Hustle Town" by the growing Hip Hop culture or simply, "H-Town." The area could also be referred to as "Pickup City" as the area boasts one of the largest Full-Size Pickup populations in the nation, second only to the Dallas market.

Houston is the No. 9 market in the country based on new light vehicle sales YTD. The overall industry is up 17.5% comparing 2011 June YTD vs 2010 YTD registrations. During the same period, H-Town's gain is approximately 7.4 percentage points below the national average at 10.1%.

H-Town's share of national new vehicle sales is down .14 percentage points at 2.14%. Ethnic consumers represent 33% of new vehicle sales in Houston. Adjacent is a pie chart that depicts the current share of new vehicle sales by ethnic group in H-Town.

From a brand perspective, Houston's Top 10 brand list boils down to a 60/40 split between Asian brands (60%) and domestic brands (40%). Chevrolet, Toyota and Ford lead the way with greater than 40 out of every 100 new vehicles originating from these brands. So who is "King of the H-Town streets?" See the Top 5 model list based on volume purchased by each diverse market listed (below).



The "Rulers of the Road" in the Houston DMA are the Ford F-Series and Toyota Camry. Why? Because the F-Series was rated No. 1 overall for the DMA and by both the African American and non-ethnic communities. Camry was rated in the Top 5 by the DMA overall and all communities. Congratulations go to the Ford F-Series and Toyota Camry for dominating the Houston list of Top 5 models.

This is the ninth installment of the diverse automotive market summary series with the tenth and final market, Miami on deck. I look forward to your comments.