Trucks Boost Sales Rate for Auto Makers
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DETROIT — Sales of domestically built cars and trucks rose 6.3% in early February, with light trucks again leading the way, auto makers reported Monday.
Overall, truck sales were up 20.6% while car sales were down 2.7%.
Ford Motor Co. continued to have strong sales, with cars up 16.4% and trucks up 19.1%.
Chrysler, which reports its sales only monthly, had 24.7% higher car sales and 40% higher truck sales, according to estimates by Ward’s Automotive Reports.
General Motors continued to see its car sales slide, down 22.3%, in part because of its decision to cut back on the number of cars it sells at discount to daily rental companies.
GM’s light truck sales rose 6.1%, despite negative publicity surrounding a $105-million jury verdict Feb. 4 in a product liability case against its older pickups.
Apple Valley, Minn., GMC truck dealer Herb Dreitzler said customer reaction has been nil to the verdict and GM’s heavily publicized discrediting of an NBC News “Dateline” report about the 1973-87 trucks.
“Nobody’s said anything about it,” he said.
Mazda, Nissan and Toyota all reported higher car sales in the period, which had nine selling days compared to eight selling days in 1992.
Combined sales by the four reporting Japanese companies were up 46.9%, but wide swings in percentages occur because of their relatively small share of the overall market.
Only seven of the 10 major U.S. makers, including an estimate of Chrysler Corp., were included in the Feb. 1-10 sales figures because of the Presidents’ Day holiday.
Six of seven companies that sell trucks had better sales than the same period a year ago, leading to a projected annual selling rate of 4.9 million, up slightly from 4.8 million in late January but much better than the projected annual rate of 4.1 million in the same period last year.
Car sales, not counting American-built Hondas, Subarus and Mitsubishis, sold at a projected annual rate of 6.4 million, well off the 7.6 million pace of late January, which was the industry’s best in two years.
