Monday was more bad news for General Motors Corp, which
lost $10.6 billion in 2005 and has been giving up U.S. market
share to Asian competitors.
GM car sales dropped 22 percent compared with March 2005
as the automaker eased off on sales to rental fleets, while truck
and sport utility vehicle sales were down 9 percent despite brisk
sales of the redesigned Chevrolet Tahoe, which saw a 20
percent increase. GM's sales were down 5 percent for the
quarter.
Overall, industry sales were down 3 percent for the month, as
automakers had trouble matching sales from March 2005, which
got an artificial boost when the Big Three U.S. automakers
unleashed a flurry of incentives to cut back on inventory.
The seasonally adjusted sales rate for March, which shows what
total sales would be if they remained at the same rate for the
entire year, was 16.6 million vehicles, according to Autodata
Corp. Automakers sold 17 million vehicles in all of 2005.
The Big Three U.S. automakers felt most of the sting, with sales
falling a combined 7.7 percent for the month.
Paul Ballew, GM's executive director of market and industry
analysis, said the results reflect the company's goals of cutting
sales to daily rental fleets - which have lower margins and hurt
automakers' residual values - and relying less heavily on
incentives. Sales at Toyota rose 7 percent for the month,
led by a 15 percent increase in truck and sport utility vehicle sales.
While sales of full-size SUVs sank - the Toyota Land Cruiser was
down 31 percent from a year ago - sales of the midsize 4Runner rose
15 percent and sales of the redesigned RAV4 crossover shot up 117
percent.
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