GM Sales Fall 2 Percent In November

GM’s sales fell by only two percent in November, showing that, unlike Chrysler, its sales are fairly well tied to the overall health of the market. All four of GM’s “core brands” posted month-on-month increases, with Buick up 14.8 percent, Cadillac up 10.3 percent, Chevrolet up 4.5 percent and GMC up 5.4 percent. Non-core brands including Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn combined for a 47.9 percent decline, to 11,755 units. Cars fell by 1.3 percent, while Trucks were down by 2.8 percent, leaving GM with total deliveries of 151,427 units.

Buick was a mixed bag in November, with LaCrosse improving 63 percent on last November’s numbers for its moribund predecessor, to 3,400 units, while Lucerne fell 30 percent to 2,171 units. Enclave saw a decent 33 percent increase over last November, with 3,056 units sold. Despite growing the most in month-on-month sales, Buick is still GM’s weakest “core brand” by volume with only 8,627 sales, and it barely beat Pontiac’s 7,426 unit performance.

Cadillac saw a troubling 6.8 percent decline in its best-selling model, the CTS, despite the alleged success of last month’s V-Series Challenge PR stunt. DTS improved by 9.4 percent, with 1,408 units, while STS declined over 55 percent to a mere 279 units. XLR (yup, they’re still selling ’em) was down only five units, with 55 sold, while the Escalade triplets combined for 2,270 units. The new SRX blew out all comparisons to last November’s performance by its aged predecessor, posting a 207 percent increase to a respectable 3,004 units.

Chevrolet’s cars posted a combined 16.9 percent increase, but the news wasn’t all good. Aveo posted a 33 percent drop to 2,212 units, Cobalt fell by 19 percent to 5,112 and Impala slid 3.7 percent to 12,375. Malibu and Camaro combined to bring up the brand’s car average though, with the ‘bu rising 17.5 percent to 11,113 and the Camaro posting a solid 6,867 units.

Chevy’s trucks, utes and CUVs didn’t fare quite as well, posting a 2 percent combined drop. Colorado kept dropping off the radar, falling 47.4 percent to 1,316 units, as did Trailblazer (-94 percent to 165 units). Bright points were the HHR (+38 percent, 4,720 units), Equinox (+273 percent, 9,587 units), Traverse (+140 percent, 7,054 units), Tahoe (+57 percent, 6,528) and Suburban (+20 percent, 4,678 units). Fullsize trucks were hard hit though, with Avalanche (-31 percent, 1,373 units) and Silverado C/K (-25 percent, 22,101 units) posting significant losses.

GMC’s sales mirrored Chevy’s, where declines in aging models were barely edged out by more successful newer models for a 5.4 percent increase. GMC’s big winner was the Acadia, which posted a 47 percent increase to 3,877 units. The new Terrain came a close second, with 3,683 units sold, and the Yukon had a surprisingly solid month, nearly flat at 2,253 units. Sierra sales fell below 10,000 units, to 8,371, while Yukon XL held relatively steady with only a 10.7 percent loss to 1,543 units.

Meanwhile, on the non-core brand front, Hummer posted another monstrous decline, dropping 84 percent to 221 units. With sales that bad, don’t be surprised if the deal to sell the ute brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong falls through any day now. Saab sold fewer than 300 cars, with every model falling by at least 50 percent. Pontiac sold 5,852 G6s (coming soon to a rental lot near you), which made up nearly all of its 7,300-unit car volume. Saturn sold 1,794 cars and 1,943 crossovers, including 1,362 VUEs.