U.S. Car Sales in January: More of the Same, GM Says
By Michelle Krebs January 21, 2009By Michelle Krebs
DETROIT -- Expect another month of dismal sales in January, a General Motors forecaster says.
"Don't be surprised to see a SAAR [seasonally adjusted selling rate] under 10 million vehicles," warned Mike DiGiovanni, GM's top sales analyst, said in a conference call with media and analysts Tuesday.
That's even lower than the SAAR of the previous three months, which ran at a rate of about 10.5 million each month.
DiGiovanni said the January will see deep drops in sales to fleets, notably rental-car companies, for GM as well as Ford and Chrysler. All three automakers have slashed production to keep inventories from building as demand weakens so they can't fill daily-rental car company orders. In addition, daily rental-car companies don't needs as many cars since they are struggling financially due to consumers staying home instead of vacationing and declines in business travel. DiGiovanni expects those orders to pick up as the economy improves throughout the year.
On the bright side, DiGiovanni sees the retail, excluding fleet, sales stabilizing. He predicts January's SAAR for retail sales will be at 8.4 million vehicles. That's in line with the 8.2 million to 8.4 million retail SAAR of the last three months. "We're seeing a stabilization in retail run rates," DiGiovanni said.
Still, he predicted: "The first quarter will be very challenging in the U.S. and Western Europe."
LEAVE A COMMENT
Maybe GM's sales would have been better if they offered their current incentives to everyone instead making them "loyalty" based. This mystifies and angers me as I don't recall GM being all too particular about which taxpayers should have funded the Federal bailout/bridge loan. I was seriously considering a chevy malibu this month, my first GM car in over a decade, but have been totally put off by this latest campaign.
ADD A COMMENT