GM Sales Fall 6 Percent In December, Down 30 Percent YTD
GM’s December sales release shows a scenario that is reflected across the industry: hefty sales declines on the year with some evening out in December. GM’s sales fell six percent last month, the result of a 54 percent decline in “non-core” brands and a 2.2 percent increase in core brand sales. Still, considering December 08 sales were down nearly by half compared to 2007, it’s clear that GM still has some climbing to do to return to something resembling normalcy. Of the four core brands, the three smaller saw modest gains, with Buick climbing 37 percent, Cadillac gaining 11.4 percent and GMC improving 4.8 percent. But those gains were offset by a 1.5 percent decline in Chevy sales. For the year, Buick dropped 25.4 percent to 102,306 units, Cadillac fell 32.3 percent to 109,092 units, GMC fell 31.1 percent to 259,779 and Chevrolet dropped 25 percent to 1,344,629 units. [Complete GM sales data in XLS (Excel) form available for download here]
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" .... a 54 percent decline in “non-core” brands and a 2.2 percent increase in core brand sales."
This says that most of the would-be customers for Saturn & Pontiac didn't migrate to other GM products ... they went to the competition. Toyota, Honda, Ford, Nissan and Hyundai all had solid sales gains in December. A big piece of that came out of GM's hide.
The ham handed way GM did its brand slaughter and dealer slaughter has left the company is an even weaker competitive position than it was before the bloodletting.
Also, BTW, Edmunds infamous analysis which claimed to predicted that the cash-for-clunkers program would destroy November and December sales results has proven to be completely wrong. It has proved to be every bit as flawed as I said it was back then. Funny how Edmunds' so called analysts were all over cable news and the 'net back then with their story, and yet are completely silent about following it up.
Not to be a broken record but... *cough* 2 more selling days in 2009 *cough* Unadjusted year over year comparsions are a oxymoron. That -6% is more like -13. It all evens out over the course of a year, but why not be accurate on a monthly basis instead of only on Dec 31st?
Chrysler and GM are in a depression... Ford and Toyota are having a recession.... Chrysler has a product problem... GM has a pi$$ed off customer problem...
I can see that the US taxpayers are getting their money's worthn't.