US car sales April 2012: GM, Ford down; Chrysler, Toyota surge | CarAdvice

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US car sales April 2012: GM, Ford down; Chrysler, Toyota surge

By Tim Beissmann
FIND DEALS

Sales of new vehicles in the US increased two per cent in April despite dealers having three fewer days to sell cars than in April 2011.

US dealers sold 1,184,567 new cars and SUVs last month, up 26,644 from the same month in the previous year. The result takes the US industry to 4.65 million sales for the year, up 10 per cent from the 4.22 million vehicles sold over the same period in 2011.

The world’s second largest new car market is now ranked an annualised rate of 14.4 million sales, up 1.3 million from the same time last year – further evidence of the resurgence of consumer confidence and the US automotive industry.

The country’s two largest manufacturers – General Motors and Ford – endured slow months, with sales down 8.2 per cent and 5.0 per cent respectively. GM sales fell 19,151 units to 213,387 compared with last year while Ford dipped 9428 units to 180,350.

Ford’s decline and an 11.6 per cent gain by Toyota saw the Japanese manufacturer fall just 2306 vehicles short of second place, closing the gap from more than 30,000 units in April 2011.

Chrysler was the big mover in April with sales rocketing 20.4 per cent to 141,165 vehicles. The group is now 33 per cent up on the same period in 2011, and has blitzed past Honda. After April 2011, Chrysler had sold 404,175 vehicles compared with Honda’s 432,777, and this year Chrysler has surged to 539,216 while Honda trails behind on 442,177.

The German manufacturing groups also enjoyed a strong month, with Daimler (owner of Mercedes-Benz) up 28 per cent, Volkswagen up 27 per cent and BMW rising a more modest six per cent.

Asian brands Hyundai and Nissan were steady in April, but both continue to see double-digit growth year-to-date.

The release of US statistics follows our report yesterday revealing preliminary data showing Mazda outsold Holden in Australia for the first time last month. Official statistics for Australian new car sales in April will be released at noon tomorrow.


 

  • Donv

    Top 5 best selling cars in USA in April

    #1 Toyota Camry: 36,820

    #2 Honda Accord: 35,385

    #3 Toyota Prius Family: 25,168

    4# Toyota Corolla/Matrix: 24,804

    #5 Honda Civic: 24,423

    #1 overall was the Ford F-series: 47,453

    • Phil

      Such boring cars. All ugly, all weak handlers and I bet they were all automatic sedans.

      • Rz6

        Weak handlers?

        Yeah these cars are drive by “normal people” in normal roads..

        Comfort, reliability and what not is the upmost importance..

        The Camry V6 is officially 5.8sec car, do put that in your euro pipe and smoke it.

        • Phil

          5.8 secs? To reach 50kmh? To cover a 1/200th mile?

        • JooberFPVGT

          Agree these cars are for the majority, lay off the handling argument, its almost invalid to average joe.
          its like Music these days, it requires little ingenuity and is marketed heavily but sales/downloads are several fold over those of Jazz, classical etc.

          But… Camry V6 is not a 5.8 second car!, low 6′s at most.

        • JooberFPVGT

          Agree these cars are for the majority, lay off the handling argument, its almost invalid to average joe.
          its like Music these days, it requires little ingenuity and is marketed heavily but sales/downloads are several fold over those of Jazz, classical etc.

          But… Camry V6 is not a 5.8 second car!, low 6′s at most.

      • Harrier

        It’s Phil

        Haven’t heard from this guy in ages..

        Why do German cars emit so much smoke from their tail pipes? Since your the German car expert, new German cars emit blue smoke, other day pretty new 328i was shooting out blue smoke, and it wasn’t even pushed.. Especially at startup..

        I have got 1990 Hiace 2.4 Petrol with 520,000Km and that only has little blue smoke during cold start.. For like2min and that’s it..

        German cars have problems, their engines are rubbish

        • Phil

          I saw a brand new Hiace the other day with 200km on the clock gushing out pink smoke, why is that?

  • Legnab

    Looks like the general has run out of steam , maybe the love affair with korean sourced cars is over .

    • JP

      Or they were missing the 400-700 monthly Colorado sales until new stock arrives.

  • Scoot

    The economies of scale US-OZ is mind boggling with 1 month of sales exceeding our yearly sales. You can understand when you see this the price discrepancy of what we pay compared to them.

    • john

      And this is a depressed car market in the US. A few years ago in the hey day they were around the 17m car mark for the year whereas now they are in the low 14m range. A loss of over 2 Oz car markets in sales. I am not condoning the ridiculous difference in car prices between here and the US but this explains it a little. The UK car market is not as big as ours yet they have alot better car prices than us. More than size of market in play when you see us vs UK!

      • Scoot

        Totally, the UK v OZ market makes it very hard to justify our high prices

  • MattW

    The headline and article are misleading. 

    There were less selling days compared to the same month last year (27 -> 24), a more accurate indication is looking at average cars sold per selling day – in reality GM was up 3.23% and Ford up 6.91%, but if you look at just the month overall they are down 8.42% & 4.95%Chrysler’s increase was actually 35.48% and Toyota’s 25.55%

  • Ramjet

    Good to see Ford F-150 still the king of the road. Under the “One Ford” global plan we should see them here or I am I dreaming.

  • MattW

    The new Ranger is pretty much the same size as the F-150, so the markets they are sold in are mutually exclusive. I think we get the better deal with the Ranger anyway. Been a few people in the US wanting Ford to sell it there instead of the F-150

  • Caskate

    some of you misinformed experts should read a bit of history. Dodge brothers were major stock holders and component suppliers to Henry Ford until they got sick of his business practices and told him to go take a running jump at himself and they went on to establish their own marque. 
    mopar rules the rest are shit!!!!