With GM’s IPO officially launched, we thought we’d send ChartOTD diving inside GM’s sales performance this year. The graph above shows GM’s top nameplates by volume for the January-October 2010 period, compared to the same ten months of 2009. All of GM’s top-ten volume vehicles are doing better than they did last year, but these are not in fact GM’s fastest-growing nameplates. For that graph and more, hit the jump…

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Who spent the most money on volume-building but profit-sapping incentives over the last month? Well, it depends on who you ask. Edmunds.com’s True Cost Of Incentives index puts GM at the top of the heap, with an October estimate of $3,437 spent per sale. Truecar.com has a similar number for GM, at $3,472, but says that Chrysler was the king of incentivized sales last month, spending $3,629 per car sold. Interestingly, both firms put Ford at just over $3,000 spent per vehicle, but Edmunds says Chrysler is actually under that mark, spending $2,927 per vehicle. In another discrepancy between the two reports, TrueCar puts Nissan at $3,050 while Edmunds puts the Nissan number at $2,321. In any case, Toyota may just be the Japanese automaker that breaks Detroit’s dominance of average incentive numbers. Toyota’s Bob Carter has revealed that big incentives are coming as Toyota struggles to get its volume up by year’s end, telling Automotive News [sub]

You will see an enhancement to marketing and incentives but [they] will remain consistent in the APR and lease arenas,” he said. “They will be the best deals of the year — leasing and APR deals are moving the market.

Our patent-pending China new car market prediction system (take GM China, deduct a few percent) hasn’t been doing so well lately, due to the poor showing of Wuling, which confused the mix. Let’s give it another cautious go.  GM China increased its October sales by 19.6 percent on strong sales of Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac cars. That according to Bloomberg, which has it straight from GM Shanghai. (Read More…)

Toyota drops in China, Canada, The United States, Japan and (almost certainly) Europe, too. You’d think good news would be scarce. And you’re right, it is! But wait, there’s one! (Read More…)

Chryslers sales in October of last year amounted to a miserable 65,803 units, so the firm’s 37 percent year-over-year sales increase in October of 2010 is not really all that surprising. And despite the uptick, Chrysler is still coming up short of its monthly “survival volume” sales goal of 95k units, coming in at just 90,137. A 79 percent increase in 300 sales (5,211 units) was the sole bright spot for the Chrysler brand last month (although T&C kept volume up with an 18 percent gain). Jeep’s new Grand Cherokee is heating up nicely, with volume hitting 12,721 units, and leading Jeep to a 111 percent increase. And the new JGC brought the whole Jeep brand up with it, as only Commander failed to record a sales increase (all other Jeep nameplates were up at least 46%). Dodge saw a slight three percent increase on the month, as low-volume nameplates gained large percentages for small volume increases, and bigger nameplates like Caravan (-8%) saw small percentage decreases. The Ram brand was up 37 percent, with volume at 18,090 units. But really, the big news here (other than the usual not-quite-enough-volume story) is the JGC and its apparent beneficial effects on the Jeep brand. Full press release here.

Most of the smaller makers reported October sales yesterday as the nation went to go vote. The big ones decided to wait until today: The Detroit 3, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. (Read More…)

After the Abwrackprämien-high in 2009 (which saved the auto industry from damnation and got rid of a lot of old cars), and the short hangover that followed, Germany is definitely back to normal. For the second month in a row, German new car sales are at 2008 levels. According to the official data of the German Kraftfahrtbundesamt, October sales were 20 percent below October 2009, but only 0.8 percent below October 2008. The graph above tells a better story. (Read More…)

The Vancouver Sun reports that pretty much, across the board and across the border, Canadian sales rose. GM’s sale rose 11 percent year on year, Ford’s sales rose 8 percent and is now within a whisker of taking the number one slot from General Motors. Honda’s sales grew 14 percent. As did Nissan’s at 4.5 percent. And Hyundai-Kia who reports rises of 8.6 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Even the smaller players had reasons to celebrate. VW went up 21.5 percent. Mitsubishi has a stonkingly good month with sales rising, YOY, by 27.2 percent. Even Volvo’s sales grew 13.9 percent. Yep. Life is good, north of the border. Except for one. (Read More…)

As U.S. car sales are forecast to be growing once again, spare a thought for those less fortunate than you. Namely, those poor people in Europe. While you’re the U.S. market is expanding, sales in the Old Country are a big NSFW mess. (Read More…)

Numbers are not in yet, and many makers won’t report until tomorrow, but it already looks like October was the best in 14 months, if Bloomberg has it right. What’s more, buyers are willing to cough up more for 2011 model-year vehicles. (Read More…)

As Herr Schmitt reported yesterday, it looked like it was going to be a bumper month for the Indian car market. In his article he mentioned that market leader, Maruti Suzuki posted a 39 percent gain, which is impressive considering production constraints is preventing them from selling any more. But let’s have a look at the other players in the Indian motor market. (Read More…)

Tomorrow, you have two choices:

1.)    Go vote.

2.)    Watch the real time reporting of October new car sales on TTAC.

What should you do? (Read More…)

Dodge’s re-boot of its product lineup is largely complete, and with new and refreshed vehicles heading to dealerships soon, it’s released pricing on its new lineup. Dodge’s new pricing list can be found here, or hit the jump for highlights.

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Given that European luxury brands have generally had their way with Detroit-based competitors in the US market, it should come as no surprise that Cadillac has failed to make any appreciable headway in the European market. The brand has been launched and re-launched in Europe four times in the last twelve years, according to Autocar, and its latest relaunch was supposed to boost sales to 20,000 per year by 2010. Despite that ambitious goal, Cadillac has fallen flat with European buyers, having moved about 1,300 units this year. As a result, the latest re-launch of Cadillac has been accompanied by dramatically scaled-back expectations: 2,500 units per year within the next “several” years (Cadillac expects the new ATS to make up about 1,500 units of this volume). Only limited numbers of CTS sedans and wagons will be converted to right-hand drive for the UK, and diesel engines for the CTS range are on hold. But even with a more modest approach to Europe, Cadillac is widely expected to keep struggling in Europe. After all, Lexus spent some $2.8b attacking the European luxury market, but sales which peaked at 60k in 2007 have retreated to a mere 30k units. As Cadillac gets stuck into its fourth re-launch, analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer is not optimistic

Meanwhile in India, things look much better. No total sales are in yet, but market leader Maruti Suzuki posted a 39 percent gain in sales to 118,908 vehicles in October from 85,415 a year earlier, reports The Nikkei [sub]. This was the strongest October in Maruti Suzuki’s recorded history. (Read More…)