GM Drops 26.1%
GM wants you to know the not-so-very-new-anymore Chevy Malibu's total sales were up 79 sales-adjusted percent in July. The penalty box known as the Chevy Aveo was up 17 percent. The Saturn Aura was up 24 percent. And Cadillac CTS sales were up 38 percent. Those are the adjusted numbers they put in the bold print right at the top of their July sales press release. However, the real story: overall sales were down 26.1 percent (unadjusted). The auto side's overall 12 percent decrease was exacerbated by a whopping 36.4 percent drop on the truck side. Something else that's easy to miss is the word "total" in front of some of the sales numbers (like Malibu above). When GM's spinmeisters talk about great "retail" sales of some models, that's a sure sign that fleet sales made up the bulk of the "total" sales mentioned for other models.
Click here for GM sales press release
(Note: The numbers in the press release are adjusted for sales days, so they will vary from the unadjusted numbers reported here.)
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kjc117: "All of GM’s hybrids are not design to be fuel saving models or hybrids at all. They just stuck them in existing models for show and go press. Toyota did same with all of their hybrids except for the Prius. The Prius is still the only car designed from the genesis to be a hybrid." Not quite... The Camry hybrid uses HSD, their advanced hybrid system, just like the Prius and, when driven reasonably, offers excellent city fuel economy. The engine also has the Atkinson cycle trick valves, so it gets better highway fuel economy (and I understand that Toyota added some underbody airflow smoothing that I wish they'd do to the LE).
saab sales: 1621 cars 405 SUVS 770 Certified pre-owned sales The sold more new Escalades in July than the entire Saab marque. And so it ends, not with a bang but a whimper....
Here's some fun information. The "Hummer of South Portland" dealership in Maine is apparently no more. The Hummer sign is still up, but inside the dealership they have a red Corvette on the floor, and some sort of Mitsubishi SUV. (The company also owns a Chevy and Mitsubishi dealership). They still have a total of 8 H2s on the lot, but the company that owned it has converted it to a Subaru dealership within the last week or so. There must be 100 Subarus parked on the lot now. They had 5 white Uplanders a couple weeks ago, but they're gone. Maybe some local utility bought them all or something. This was apparently the only Hummer dealer in Maine, and I think it opened back in 2005. So I guess they had a 3 year run to sell their crap vehicles to the morons that bought them.