Southfield, Michigan: General Motors Co lost US market share to Ford Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp in December as the government-controlled automaker failed to take advantage of improving consumer demand.
GM light-vehicle sales fell 5.7 per cent, worse than analysts' estimates, after it trimmed deliveries to fleet customers and worked to wind down half of its eight domestic brands. Ford sales soared 33 per cent last month, and Toyota jumped 32 per cent, the automakers said on Tuesday.
"People are still concerned about GM's future and purchasing a GM car may seem like more risk than a consumer wants to take," said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. "This is a company that is still recovering from bankruptcy."
Improvement
A 15 per cent increase in industry-wide sales in December capped automakers' first quarterly improvement since the last three months of 2006. The recession and Chapter 11 filings at the predecessors of Detroit-based GM and Chrysler dragged 2009 new-vehicle purchases to the lowest in almost three decades.
US sales of cars and light trucks improved to 1.03 million, according to industry researcher Autodata Corp. That equated with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 11.3 million vehicles, Autodata said. The year-earlier rate was 10.3 million.
GM said its December decline was driven chiefly by a 33 per cent drop in deliveries to business customers such as rental-car companies and a 55 per cent plunge for the Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn and Saab brands that are being shut or sold. GM said sales rose 2.2 per cent for the Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick models that the biggest US automaker is keeping.
Last month's tally reflected an unfavourable comparison with results from a year earlier, when fleet sales were increased before a cut in early 2009 output, said Susan Docherty, GM's North American sales and marketing chief.
‘Encouraged'
"I'm very encouraged with what we're getting done on our core brands — Chevy, Buick, GMC and Cadillac — and we've had a very orderly wind down on Pontiac and Saturn," Docherty said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
GM emerged in July from a 40-day, $50 billion (Dh183.5 billion), government-backed bankruptcy that gave taxpayers an ownership stake of about 61 per cent. The automaker began repaying some of the $6.7 billion in outstanding government loans last month.
"Ford is much further along in their recovery than GM, and it shows," Lindland said.
"From inside the industry, we are more confident things are getting better at GM. For consumers, that still isn't the case because there are still a lot of negative stories left on GM."
For the year, GM's US market share fell to 19.9 per cent from 22.3 per cent as Ford rose to 16.1 per cent from 15 per cent and Toyota climbed to 17 per cent from 16.7 per cent, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Autodata.
Michael DiGiovanni, GM's chief sales analyst, said the automaker's December performance was "very encouraging" in light of its bankruptcy restructuring.
