General Motors Company posted its first month-to-month sales increase in 21 months during October as the market continued to show small signs of stability as the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Selling Rate crept up to 10.7 million units.
The post-clunkers hanger over proved relatively limited, noted Mike DiGionvanni, GM’s director of sales analysis. “It’s now behind us,” he said.
Ford Motor Company sales increased 3% versus a year ago and were 21% higher than September as Ford continued to pick up market share. It was the third time in the last four months Ford sales have increased.
However, the big winners last month were Hyundai, Kia, and Subaru, which posted a 41% increase in sales. Hyundai was up 49%, while its junior partner Kia reported a 45% increase in sales. Hyundai-Kia combined have now outsold Chrysler over the past couple of months as the South Korean export driven enterprise has increased market share.
Chrysler reported a 30% drop in sales.
“The industry showed signs of improvement this month with increasing sales, which is a trend we expect to continue for the remainder of the year,” said Fred Diaz, newly appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer-Ram Brand and Lead Executive for the Sales Organization, Chrysler Group LLC.
“Chrysler Group expects to get its fair share of the increases as November and December traditionally are two of the best months for SUV sales, and the Jeep brand offers customers the best SUVs in the marketplace,” he said.
However it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Koreans are not only taking sales away from American brands, but they are also putting heavy pressure on other Asian nameplates.
Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi all reported their sales dropped in October.
At the other end of the market, BMW saw its sales drop 19% and Audi reported a 1% decline from what was a record month in 2008.
Mercedes-Benz USA, however, had a very strong October reporting a 21% increase in sales over October 2008. “Clearly we’re very pleased with this month’s result and we believe that we will be able to parlay this into a strong fourth quarter and continued increases in our market share,” said Ernst Lieb, President & CEO of MBUSA.