dav305z

GM is up about 2 percent, Toyota (and just about everyone else) is down.

This is only 25 selling days, a small sample size, but could be a very good sign for GM. First of all, it's new products are definitely getting traction. Secondly, it might show that GM can do well even in a declining market. Perhaps GM has underperformed so badly in the past decade, that it now has room to grow - and gain share - even in a bear market. Don't forget, GM still has the biggest dealer network, the biggest production network, etc. These have been disadvantages in the past, but allow GM to move a lot of metal very quickly.

In any event, great news for GM.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marke...0080201?rpc=44

http://media.gm.com/servlet/GatewayS...74&docid=43042

mdenz3

Links don't work.

Good for GM.

GTOJack

GM incentive spending was up. All that does is take away sales from February if incentives are discontinued. GM had $2000 top off on GM cards plus $1000 loyalty if you could prove you owned a 99 or newer GM vehicle. Add to that other rebates plus auto show rebates in certain markets and GM is back to the lead in incentives. Most incentives ended 1/31/08.
Chrysler sales down 12%. Cerburus may order more cutbacks in production.

johnsocal

It's always good to hear about GM's sales going up while Toyota's goes down.

Threxx

That sounds like it might be good news, but I sure wish these articles would bother to mention current incentives and promotions as compared to what was being offered in the month a year ago that the numbers are being compared to. Otherwise it's a very useless statistic.

It'd be like if I said "good news, people are exercising more! Twice as many citizens of the US went running today as this same day last year" without mentioning the fact that this same day last year half the country was enveloped in a nasty snow storm that kept pretty much everyone in doors aside from necessity.

99SilverSS

Did they count their Wulling sales in China??

WERM

Only need about thirty straight years of this...

graham

Local Toyota commercials say they offer 5 grand in incentives on some quad cabs.

Threxx

Sometimes there are some liberties taken in defining "incentives". I know they sure don't offer 5k in cash rebate on them.

It's probably that they offer some sort of discounted finance rate and they've determined the cash value of that discounted financing over the next 60 months to be equal to 5k.

Either that or they're defining incentive as to include discount off sticker, so you get a 40k dollar truck for 35k which is really not much better than just a regular negotiation close to invoice price minus a small 1000 dollar rebate.

dav305z

Yes, but Toyota and the rest of the industry faced the same conditions and did not do as well - that is the relevant comparison here. If we're looking solely at January to January, you would probably come to the conclusion that both were terrible months (in fact, this Jan was second worst in twenty years, last Jan being the worst). By your logic, we'd never be able to compare sales figures from car companies.

We can be sure that the other Detroit companies had major incentives, and as mentioned, Toyota is no longer above putting cash on the hood. Given the same "weather" to use your analogy, GM did better.