Although GM’s sales are down nearly 20 percent compared to last July’s poor showing, your federally-owned General Motors is staying upbeat. More accurately, Mark LaNeve wants to keep his job (and, logically, the government cheese flowing).
Our performance is being driven by the outstanding products in our core Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac and Buick brands. While still challenging, the market is firming and GM sales are still tracking ahead of what we projected in our reinvention plan. In July we are projecting our retail market share to exceed our year-ago performance. From great new products, like our Cadillac SRX and CTS Sport Wagon, Chevrolet Camaro and Equinox, to attractive financing and new leasing opportunities and to the Cash-for-Clunkers program that helps reduce the cost to buy a new vehicle — customers have unprecedented opportunities to get into a new GM car or truck. We anticipate an additional sales lift in August if Congress approves more funding for the wildly-popular Cash-For-Clunkers economic recovery program.
Speaking of wildly popular, how did those outstanding products do? Let’s start with The Standard of the World. The “great new” SRX sold only 648 units. You say product rollout availability issues, I say don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, GM had better be hoping for a Sportwagon rebound, because CTS is feeling the heat this summer (-47 percent, 2,383 units). The rest of Cadillac’s lineup isn’t worth mentioning, with mere triple-digit sales per nameplate (Escalade being the exception at 1,068 and dropping).
At Buick, the Enclave is the only glimmer of hope, falling only 2.5 percent compared to sales in July ’08. And at 3,797, it’s the top Buick volume model. Lucerne (1,834) is still outselling LaCrosse (1,468).
Aveo got almost no Cash for Clunkers boost, falling 31 percent to 4,961 units. Cobalt dropped 42.5 percent, to 9,435. Whose stimulus is this anyway? Impala continues to be GM’s overachieving stepchild, logging 14,649 sales, nearly a ten percent increase. Malibu fell nearly eight percent, to 15,339 units. The drama continues.
The Camaro is white hot at 7,113 units. How long before the Challenger’s belly flop is repeated at Chevy? I’m sure there’s an offshore website somewhere taking odds.
Chevy trucks got some real help from the Equinox last month (10,834, +78 percent). Suburban held fairly steady (3,281, -17 percent), but Tahoe kept freefalling, down 46 percent to 4,178. The most fuel efficient “truck” in Chevy’s lineup, the HHR, didn’t get even a little clunker bump, dropping 27 percent to 8,409.
GMC dropped worse farther than Chevy trucks, despite solid showings from Acadia (4,974, -8 percent) and Sierra (10,465, -10 percent).
Pontiac’s car lineup is led by Vibe (6,046, +34 percent), G6 (8,193, -38.2 percent), G5 (2,723 +2.2 percent) and G8 (2,404, +63 percent). Bye, bye now.
Saturn is a bloodbath, reminding one of what the rest of GM’s release might have looked like were it not for the government’s clunker deal. Aura dropped a sickening 80 percent to 1,415 units. Astra down to 558 units, Sky at 311, Outlook at 966. Even the Vue is down by nearly 50 percent, to 2,758 units.
Why do they get to keep counting Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer? At first, I thought sales were down 20% because they lopped off 4 brands. Has someone yet done the calculations of what New GM’s sales are and how far down they are from Old GM’s last July?
I understand why it’s necessary to include these 4 former brands for comparison purposes, but that’s the only reason they should be tallied. These are not “non-core” brands as GM wants to call them in the press release, they are NOT GM BRANDS AT ALL NOW! I think GM is including them to keep from being really embarrassed at the 30ish % decrease they should be disclosing.
I tried my hand and get a 31.9% decrease from last July comparing old GM with new GM that lacks 4 brands.
The 648 number is still the Old SRX BTW
“From great new products, like our Cadillac SRX and CTS Sport Wagon, Chevrolet Camaro and Equinox, to attractive financing and new leasing opportunities and to the Cash-for-Clunkers program that helps reduce the cost to buy a new vehicle – customers have unprecedented opportunities to get into a new GM car or truck.”
Finally, the pent-up demand for GovMo vehicles can be satisfied. By the look of the sales numbers, it looks like a lot of people who now have the “opportunity” to buy from Government Motors have been showing up at Hyundai dealers.
The quote from LaNeve is one of the most sickening I can remember from a guy who specializes in disgusting and inaccurate statements. One of the things that continues to truly irritate me about GM is my perception at least that they have treated this entire BK thing as a triumph–a reinvention!
And jpc has a very good point. Why can they continue to count brands that are not GM brands anymore or have been euthanized? For yearly comparison purposes yes, but as far as feeding GM’s PR machine, not a chance.
Finally, I just saw in the WSJ that Hyundai sales were up nearly 12%. It will be interesting when someone really analyzes where the C4C went.
GM has a lackluster lineup, a still screwed up marketing model and the same old same old guys (& gal) running the show. Ford has its problems, but isn’t nearly as messed up as GM still is.
I had my hopes up for the GM restructuring, but all they did was another round of financial maneuvers without addressing the leadership problems at the core of the GM debacle.
You took the words right out of my mouth, tpandw! The fact that our tax dollars are the only thing keeping this idiot’s paycheck from bouncing has no bearing on his ability to whine that we need to throw MORE tax dollars (via C4C) his way! “Sickening” may be too polite a word, but all the others coming to my mind are outright profanity.
Is Saturn even going to make it to whatever Pensky has planned? I can’t see how they can exist on those sales numbers (well I can, but I don’t want to.)
Who’s stimulus is this anyway?
It belongs to Hyundai and Ford.
Saturn dealers can only survive on their used car lots. Can’t survive on new car sales. Cadillac is dead, Buick is dead, and they ain’t coming back to life. Zombies at best, the living dead.
Anyone been able to find one of the Pontiac Solstice hardtops? So few were made, that is one car that will be a collectors item. Dealer tells me its hopeless, he has searched nationally, can’t find one.
The corvette is the most beautiful car made in America. Hopefully Penkse or similar takes it over when GM goes chapter 7.
Hey.. Don’t bash GM sales..
As long as they stay profitable and keep churning out cash quarter after quarter, who cares about volume…
And while I’m defending GM, give Lutz a chance. He’s run global marketing for numerous companies and has a long track record of success.
What could go wrong?
We’ve seen some lift in a down market Hyundai and Ford. They’ve got products, and now they’ve got products in driveways where they weren’t before. That’s better than “viral marketing.”
I think that in a few years, a lot of marketing mavens and auto industry execs will point to C4C and say that rather than save GM and Chrysler, it was another nail in the coffin.
It’s a big coffin though, so it’s gonna take a lot of nails.
“Can one of you lackeys grab the touch-up paint?”
Don’t we need a Chapter 7 Watch for GM?
There are only four Solstice Coupes on Ebay:
http://motors.shop.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks-/6001/i.html?_dmpt=US_Cars_Trucks&_mqf=0&_qfkw=1&_sop=7&_trksid=p4506.c0.m273&_myi=2009&_fpos=98665&_lsbx=0&_fspt=0&_flso=0&Make=Pontiac&Model=Solstice
It’s pretty but I really don’t think it’s worth the money.
The Camaro is white hot at 7,113 units. How long before the Challenger’s belly flop is repeated at Chevy? I’m sure there’s an offshore website somewhere taking odds.
Lutz said they needed to sell about 120K Camaro’s a year to break even. 7,113 units in a month is 85,356 for the year. So they’re still quite a bit short of breaking even.
Thanks Seth, I will take a look.
lw –
reminds me of the Deuce Bigelow movie where he is off the coast of Mexico, someone thinks they see sharks, and he makes the quote “Hey this is Mexico, they know what they are doing!”. I think of GM, the sharks are circling, sure GM knows what they are doing.
Dominion Chevrolet/Pontiac/GMC/Buick in Short Pump, VA (a suburb of Richmond) had one of the Solstice hardtops on the lot (as of last Friday). Black on black, sticker at $35K.
I drive all over Chicagoland, and I swear Ive seen exactly 2 Camaros and 2 Challengers on the road. How am I missing them? Where are any of the these “white-hot” 7113 units? Is anything truly white-hot?
I do see tons of ex-long-time-dealerships closed and for sale. I think domestic mfgs and dealers still have loads more crack to smoke. Sorry, but you STILL couldnt GIVE* me a $65K? Escalade, Deniale, or any of this other crap, when a Sierra pickup can be had for what…15K?
*(Immediately driven to dealer for any check)
Matt51:
Didn’t some GM bigwig say they had to get every vehicle right to make this work? No room for error?
What, me worry?
lw
That was GM CEO Fritz Henderson.
Mark LaNeve, a better quote for you to use next time:
“We took your money already. Thanks to that, I just bough a new yacht for the girlfriend and a treadmill for the wife. Anyway, get over the perception gap thing and buy a GM car already. Heck, you own part of the company so why not! BTW my salary stays put!”
Aveo got almost no Cash for Clunkers boost, falling 31 percent to 4,961 units.
Die you rotten piece of Daewoo scum… Die!!!
That’ll teach the General for dressing up pigeon and serving it as turkey.
The Camaro is white hot at 7,113 units. How long before the Challenger’s belly flop is repeated at Chevy? I’m sure there’s an offshore website somewhere taking odds.
Autoblog reports that the Camaro managed to outsell the Mustang, so technically it’s the bestselling pony car on the market. The V6 model (for the time being) truly does embody a value-for-money proposition over the Mustang at the very least, so that belly flop you’re looking for may not occur.
I listened to the conference call. Two noteworthy things:
1. Almost all the talk was about C4C. Without it, there’d be no joy in Mudville. This program is going to be like crack to the automakers. If you think this program is an abomination, write your Congressman, often. They think there are 5 million clunkers out there that would be attractive C4C fodder, so this could go on a while (although not all the clunker owners would necessarily want to do a deal).
2. As noted, they sold a little over 7K Camaros. On the conference call, it was mentioned that there’s no inventory of Camaros and they still have unfilled orders (that part of the conversation was confused but 10K orders would be a good guess). This seems like a rather small number. Do they only make ~7K/month? Are Camaros with certain options still on hold somewhere and the held Camaros don’t count for inventory? Or is capacity really in the 7K range, in which case, how could they hope to sell > 100K of these in a year and make a profit (Yes, happy_endings, I remember the > 100K remark by El Lutzbo)?
There’s Camaros rental fleets (and my son swears a nearby town has a Camaro police car), so people still with outstanding orders should be just ripping mad. And maybe they are.
fred diesel :
Come on down south and you’ll find where the white hot cameros are landing. The more I see them in the flesh the more obnoxious they look, have to agree with the challenger comparison (they’ll never go that low b/c they’re not a Chry. Co product), but the look is just too polarizing and those vehicles just don’t seem to last long.
@ Robert
Fritz.. That’s right he said that…
Good thing Fritz has a long track record of executing successful turnaround plans both inside and outside of the auto industry.
It costs millions for some of these specialists, but you have to hire people with the experience and track record.
niky: … writes on the Aveo non-bounce…
C4C isn’t tied to any particular automaker, so those who wanted a small car went somewhere else. Anywhere else. This is really the final judgement on the Aveo’s value. Or lack thereof.
And the Cruze is coming from Daewoo, too, isn’t it?
Maybe mikey has some insight on the Camaro situation?
They’ve built 32K and sold 22K. There’s 10K in the pipeline somewhere. That seems like a lot if, as they say, there aren’t any.
And the Cruze is coming from Daewoo, too, isn’t it?
It is, but the Aveo and Optra/Forenza were both cynical straight rebadges of Daewoos that were already developed when Daewoo went bust. To save time and money and to get the Chevrolet brand out into the boondocks, GM merely reskinned them and slapped Chevy badges on them.
Instead of bringing Chevy to the masses, they merely reinforced the stereotype of American car = junk. I don’t know very many owners of these cars, but by last count, just one in ten is satisfied. That’s a far cry from the one in ten or so that’s dissatisfied with Ford’s equivalent global cars.
One hopes that the Cruze, like the Captiva, which is the first completely clean-sheet design to come out of GMDAT, will be, at the very least, competent.
But if it shares any underpinnings with the Aveo, I’m not holding my breath.
Malibu fell nearly eight percent, to 15,339 units.
Aura dropped a sickening 80 percent to 1,415 units.
The Malibu didn’t drop too badly, relatively speaking, so maybe Saturn intenders decided to go for the still extant Chevy brand. Or is that too optimistic?
KixStart: C4C isn’t tied to any particular automaker, so those who wanted a small car went somewhere else. Anywhere else. This is really the final judgement on the Aveo’s value. Or lack thereof.
An article in today’s local paper claimed that the Ford Focus has been the model most likely to be bought under the Cash for Clunkers program.
KixStart: And the Cruze is coming from Daewoo, too, isn’t it?
I believe that Daewoo did the heavy lifting on the engineering, and it will be built in the U.S.
geeber: “The Ford Focus has been the model most likely to be bought under the Cash for Clunkers program…”
That is pretty good news for Ford, no question about it, but which manufacturer is the big winner?
update: Trust TTAC… there’s now an article on that. Of the top 10, three are Detroiters. Of the top 5, three are Toyotas. Yes, the Focus is first.
Another note on the conference call…
It just occurred to me… no one said or asked anything about incentives. Surely, C4C is a huge incentive but I imagine GM still has considerable incentives in play.
There was discussion of fleet sales, which have fallen off dramatically, “as planned.” Whose plan is that? GM’s plan? Or the fleet purchaser’s plans to hold off buying cars until their business improves?