Everyone saw it coming. Even Bob Lutz. The reasons are myriad. An implosion in the housing market, consumers laden with more debt than ever, gasoline prices that are not going down and no super interesting models for dealers to sell have all conspired to tank April sales amongst the nouvelle Big Three. Even Toyota "We Will Crush You" Motor Company's sales fell by 4.4%. And this is after rising 11.7% to pass the General in March. Ford's down 12.9% vs. a year ago. Which is bad. Even the perennial all-star best-seller F-150 is down 12.4%. GM missed a double digit decline but is still off to the tune of 9.5% for April. One bright spot: DaimlerChrysler is up. Specifically Chrysler, as sales of the awesome new Wrangler and ugly new Compass boosted Jeep's sales by 29% last month, perking up the 'merican side's overall sales by 1.6%. Which, even though Mercedes sales were down, lifted DCX as a whole for the month by 1.2%. Which just cheeses Magna, Kerkorian and the Fatherland off.
Automakers report slow U.S. sales in April [msnbc.com]
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