I posted something similar in another thread. I figured I'd expand it and turn it into it's own thread.

Chevrolet sold 2,763,238 vehicles in 2004 vs 2,655,777 last year, a 4%increase!
Ford sold 2,778,678 this year vs 2,894,347, down slightly for the year.

Vehicle to vehicle sales:
Impala vs Taurus:
290,259 vs 248,148

Mustang vs Monte Carlo (Mustang was out of production 3 months this year):
129,858 vs 57,679

Cavalier vs Focus:
195,275 vs 208,339

Thunderbird vs Corvette:
11,998 vs 35,276


Ford's strength is their new F150, which because of it's record breaking year and the general decline of Lincoln & Ford's SUV line, now makes up nearly 34% of Ford's sales next to 29% last year.

Chevy's comes amid agressive incentives virturally across the board. Only the Cavalier & Monte Carlo saw sales drop this past year.

GM's best selling cars: Impala at #1. Cavalier at 195,275 was #2. The new Malibu was 3rd at 179,806 (Classics still sold 88,211)

Ford's: Taurus #1, #2 Focus at 208,339. Third was Mustang at 129,858. Not bad for a car that missed production 1/4 of the year.



And in case some of you others were wondering:

GM still sold 127 new Camaros, 206 Auroras, 5 Chevy Prizms, 7 Eldorados, & 109 Firebirds. All long discontinued.

RWD Cadillac CTS are within striking distance of the best selling FWD DeVille. DeVille's sales dropped 17% while CTS' is up 16%. There is a 10K spread between them for 2004, but in December, CTS was less than 200 cars behind the DeVille in sales.

Corvette sales jumped 26%

SSR sales jumped an astonding 480%

And finally to you GTO neighsayers, especially to the fellow who claimed the October & November GTO sales increase was just a spike, and claimed the numbers would drop as people discovered the 2005 had more horsepower, and dealer greed had absolutley nothing to do with it's sales failure :

GTO sold 2952 cars in December, selling 13,569 for the year. In fact, In December, GTO sold 1/3 the rate of Grand Prixs, & slightly outsold Corvette!

As for competitors:
Mustang Cobra 2003: 13,467
Mustang Mach 1 2003: 9652
GTO 2004: 13,569

No doubt, if it wasn't for dealer gouging, dealer policy on test drives, dealers sabotaging potential sales for the first 8 months of this year & GM misjudging incentives, GTO would have easily managed to sell an extra 4,431 cars this year meeting it's target...heck, till last August, GTO didn't even break 1000 cars per month!

Should be intresting to see what happens with the 13,000 sales target in GTO's shortened 2005 model year (January-September).

http://www.blueovalnews.com/2004/sal...ds.03may04.htm
http://www.blueovalnews.com/2005/bus...final.2004.htm
http://media.gm.com/

 

A jump from 800k to 2.8 million?! That is more than a 14.6% increase.

 

if they sold GTOs here the sale figures would look totally different.

 

Edited.

Darn cut & paste.

 

Some thoughts...

Good to see GTO doing well... further proof of the dealer gouging problem and not so much the car not being wanted in the numbers they were wanting to sell.

Interesting that the ANCIENT Cavalier stayed so close to the relatively new Focus. Will be interesting ot see how Cobalt competes since it is a bit higher priced.

 

He probably forgot the 1 in front of it and left out about a million sales.

 

guionM,
I'm not sure your figures are correct.
This link, from the GM site, Investor Information lists Chevrolet's '03 sales of 2,655,777 units versus '04 sales of 2,763,238...which is only a 4% increase.
S.

 

Might not include medium duty and chassis builds.

I wonder how they count those...

 

Nope...looks like he had a typo and corrected it. 14.6% seemed way out of whack.

Got in now.
S.

 

Great thread guionM. But why in god's name did you compare the Bird to Vette? Because it is a 2 seater?

 

It's always interesting to see this sort of data. Thanks for posting. To play devil's advocate for a sec...


The flip side of this: How many GTOs would have sold if they had not been discounted by approximately 17% for the last couple of months ($5500 rebate), along with other incentives? Some folks are reporting that they are buying brand new GTOs for $24k ( or less) which is ~27% off of MSRP.

Just some food for...uh.....throwing out I guess.

 

Bob thanks for pointing this out first. I over looked it. 2003 Cobra/MACH 1 sales numbers vs 2004 GTO sales? They should of announced the 04 Cobra numbers by now? Or did you do a oopsie and do a typo.

 

It is interesting to note the differences in philosophy between GM and Ford now.

Bill Ford has said that there will be no more "heavy hitters" like the Taurus was in its day. They prefer to build cars that will have respectable sales (say 100K+), that have a higher retail mix, higher resale, lower incentives, and much fewer large fleet sales. In other words, they prefer to sell cars at a profit. They have been willing to sacrifice market share to do this also.

GM is all about volume. Volume at any cost.

Its funny, because they both used to have that same philosophy.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the end.

Cavalier sales do not surprise me at all. When you can give away a brand new car for less than $9K, the sales will come. It doesn't matter how crappy the product is. This was proven very well by the first Hyundai Excel.

It will be interesting to see how Cobalt sales play out. Seeing as how the car is far upmarket from where the Cavalier was. Will the general public see it as the good car it is.............. or see it as a "redesigned" Cavalier with a higher price. (remembering that the general public are not car enthusiasts who know that this is an ALL NEW car). I think the appearance similarities (the Cobalt could be an evolution of the Cavalier in looks) could confuse the laymen.

 

Somehow this seems odd since they are piling up on lots everywhere (there is a three hundred and something day supply) and GM is forcing small town dealers in the "middle of nowhere" to take them. Not to mention they also halted production due to the above.

 

Edited for Comedic Value:

Vehicle to vehicle sales:

Impala vs Taurus:
290,259 vs 248,148
Winner: Avis

Mustang vs Monte Carlo
129,858 vs 57,679:
Loser: Geff Gordon

Cavalier vs Focus:
195,275 vs 208,339
Winner: Focus, with 208,339 recalls

Thunderbird vs Corvette:
11,998 vs 35,276
Owner with no ***** vs. owner with small *****.
Winner: Owner with small *****.

And in case some of you others were wondering:

GM still sold 127 new Camaros, 206 Auroras, 5 Chevy Prizms, 7 Eldorados, & 109 Firebirds. All long discontinued.
(New owners were given a self help book "Coping with instant depreciation")

Corvette sales jumped 26%
(Sales of Viagara are up 26%)

SSR sales jumped an astonding 480%
(480% of SSRs are on sale)