General Motors Corp posted an unexpected monthly sales rise on Thursday late and Japan's Toyota Motor Co made further market inroads as February US auto sales avoided the slump most analysts had predicted. GM's 3 percent year-on-year February sales gain marked the first such improvement for the world's largest automaker since November.
Toyota Motor Co, the fastest growing major automaker, posted a 12-percent sales gain on the strength of a fuel-efficient line-up including its hybrid Prius. But GM's improved performance came as the biggest surprise given concern about the US economy and the spillover from a weak housing market and tighter lending.
Wall Street analysts and GM had forecast a sales decline of the kind that hit GM's Detroit-based rivals. Chrysler Group, the embattled US unit of DaimlerChrysler AG, reported an 8 percent drop in sales. Ford Motor Co's sales were off 13 percent, in line with its own cautionary forecast.
Other Japanese automakers had a positive month, although they lagged Toyota. Honda Motor Co's sales rose 3 percent Nissan Motor Co's sales were up 1 percent. Analysts credited GM's mid-month introduction of zero-percent financing on much of its line-up for driving a February surge in its showroom sales, which rose 11 percent.
GM said it would keep running targeted sales incentives in March, while avoiding blow-out incentives, like employee pricing, that it began to phase out last year. Chrysler's sales decline was the first monthly result since the struggling automaker announced a restructuring that will cut 13,000 jobs in an effort to restore profitability by 2008.
Potential bidders, including private equity firms, have begun to size up Chrysler for a potential acquisition after Daimler said last month it was leaving all options open for the unit, which represents the Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler brands. Analysts had expected the auto industry to post lower overall sales results, continuing a trend that began late last year as the US manufacturing sector slipped into a broader slowdown.
But the industry-wide tally for February was almost unchanged from a year earlier at 1.25 million vehicles, equivalent to an annualised sales rate of 16.6 million units, according to Autodata Corp. That was better than the range of most Wall Street and industry expectations which had been for an annual rate of between 15.8 million and 16.2 million vehicles for the month.
Ford set a sharply lower production target for the second quarter, down 14 percent. GM set its own second-quarter production plan down 5 percent from the year earlier. Over the first two months of the year, Ford's US market share stood at 14.9 percent, behind Toyota at 15.5 percent and GM at 23.4 percent. DaimlerChrysler was No 4 at 14.1 percent. Honda was No 5 at 9 percent.
Ford, which is counting on holding its US market share near 14 percent as it shutters plants and sheds jobs, saw two of its key models post double-digit percentage sales declines. In the pickup truck market - the last niche dominated by US automakers - the Chevrolet Silverado unseated the Ford's F-Series trucks as the top selling retail model in America.
Sales of Ford's F-Series pickup trucks dropped 12 percent. GM, meanwhile, saw double-digit gains for its newer Silverado and GMC Sierra. GM's full-size pickup trucks gained 36 percent. The slowdown in the US housing market has hit the full-size pickup truck market hard because many contractors have delayed purchases, according to analysts.
Ford also faces new competition from Toyota, which began selling its all-new Tundra pickup last month. Toyota's pickup truck sales were up just under 2 percent in February. The Japanese automaker has called the Tundra, which is priced above the comparable US offerings, the most important product launch in its history.
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