Sales of GMs core brands dropped 10.6 percent in August compared to their Cash-For-Clunkers-fueled August 2009 performance, but overall sales were down 25 percent. Because the C4C program helped The General shift more value-oriented models, Buick was up 66 percent, Cadillac was up 83 percent, and GMC was up 12.3 percent, while Chevrolet shed 21.5 percent.
Top improving nameplates include Buick LaCrosse (+89.6%, 5,339 units), Cadillac SRX (+208.7%, 4,325), Cadillac CTS (+60.8%, 4,155), Cadillac DTS (+1278%, 1,896) and GMC Terrain (+787.5%, 4,189).GM’s biggest decliners by nameplate were Chevy Aveo (-68.4%, 4,019) Chevy Cobalt (-67.6%, 5,643), Chevy Traverse (-31.5%, 7,850), and GMC Acadia (-23.2%, 4,223). Big trucks held steady, with Silverado gaining 5 percent to 34,084 and Sierra declining .1 percent to 11,640, but compact pickups like GMC Canyon (-61.5%, 667 units) and Chevy Colorado (-60.3%, 1,847 units) dropped hard. Big utes were as did better than their big pickup brethren, with Tahoe rising about 2 percent to 6,119 units, Suburban dropping 25% to 3,080, Yukon rising 84.6% to 2,387 and Yukon XL increasing 82.4% to 1,556. Escalades were up about 15 percent as a group.
Meanwhile, fleet sales continue to make up a significant number of GM’s sales, with 51,951 units going to fleets, or about 28 percent of GM’s August 2010 sales. Based on GM’s announcement of Buick, Cadillac and GMC retail improvements (+102%, +83%, +18% respectively), and improvement in Chevy full-size truck retail numbers (+8%), most of that fleet volume was composed of Chevy cars.
Party at TTAC today…
Oh yeah..the bashers will be out in full force. Time to get out of the A/C and go cut the lawn.
As a GM basher, I can’t bash this news. GM’s 23% YTD sales increase is a good thing. August 2009 will always be an anomaly.
I just hope that in addition to moving cars, they are doing so profitably.
I am not a GM basher, but the 23% increase is only core brands, year over year total GM is 6% up, which, granted, is still admirable considering they dropped so many sales channels.
As much as I dislike GM products, it’s good that Buick and Cadillac were up quite a bit and YTD GM as a whole has sold a lot more vehicles than 2009. Of course 2009 was pretty bad for car sales until the cash for clunkers crap. Maybe taxpayers will get a few cents of their money back at some point.
GM, Bankruptcy Edition 2.0?
More like GM Profit-Making 101.
Look at the numbers:
. Buick up +73%
. Caddy up +90%
. GMC up +17%
High-margin brands are all up.
Losing -10% overall volume out of low-margin Chevy sales doesn’t hurt GM when their product mix improves like that.
If GM could have this as the net result for the year, I’ll be hearing the high-fiving from the RenCen all the way over here in LA.
I’m surprised to see that the Malibu was under 20k sales for the month…it was over 20k in July and in August GM was heavily advertising $3k cash back on the hood on the 2010’s. I bought a 2010 Malibu in August and it was hard finding the 4-cyl LTZ 2010 models…they seemed to be moving pretty quickly. Maybe the July sales reflected more fleet sales of this particular model??
Glad to see Impala sales lagging. Chevy seems to have no motivation to refresh/replace it. A sustained sales fall-off may change their tune.
As much as I’d enjoy dancing upon Government Motors’ grave (and still expect to within my lifetime) this seems to be nothing more than a market correction, and probably isn’t due to anything GM has done or failed to do. We should expect other automakers to report similar drop-offs for August.
With the poor economy and auto sales in general I don’t think GM’s results are that bad.
The fall seems concentrated in the Aveo and Cobalt. I wonder if this is systemic — small car sales are flagging, especially lousy small cars — or particular to the upcoming Cruze introduction.
Small car sales are sagging because gas is cheap right now. Once gas gets back up to $4+/gallon, they’ll jump up again and full-size truck/suv sales will crater again.
Exactly. GM could care less about not selling more small cars that they don’t make any money on.
Here’s an article about GM’s upcoming IPO: http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/08/30/on-gms-ipo-taxpayers-are-poised-to-get-royally-screwed/
Interesting how the Escalade is broken down into its separate vehicles, Tahoe, Suburban and Silverado / Sierra copies..
But the CTS isnt.