Not bad not bad.

However with car sales up 1% and trucks carrying the brunt of the sales increases, the new offerings from Chevrolet and Cadillac have to get here.

Hopefully gas prices stay low so trucks can continue their momentum.

 

Good news!!!

The sales momentum should help them during the 1st half of 2007.

 

Yeah great news, but not for the scumbags who run the press! I'm sure this news, won't make it to the average Joe!

 

But, here's what you're missing with the "so-called" good news:

General Motors car sales:

Buick: Sales up 20.4%
Cadillac: down 4.5%
Chevrolet: down 17.7%
Pontiac: down 18.8%
Saturn: up 66.7%.


Impala is the only Chevy car not down substantially. It's up 1.5%.

At Cadillac, the CTS is up 2%. The XLR is up 35.3.

At Pontiac, only Solstice is up 7.8%. The rest of the line is a near disaster. Grand Prix and G6 especially. Down 32.7 & 22.9% respectively. Especially painful: there's more G6 models this year than last.

Outside of Buick & Saturn, there is no real good car news (overall car sales down 7.9%) at GM.

Buick, Lecrosse is down 25%..... Lucerne, up 195%.
Aura & Sky are directly responsible for Saturn's huge increase in sales.

http://media.gm.com/servlet/GatewayS...=2&docid=30971

 

Well that's not good! I guess, I missed that part. Still with the great product GM is putting out these days, across the board, and public perception being what it is, I can't help but be angry with the press. I still blame them, and wouldn't spend a nickel on their crap, they put out. I was just in the dr's office, and picked up one of the many rags ( I'm not even going to name them, they don't deserve the plug), to read while I waited for the GF. It was the typical trash GM garbage, nothing has changed in their reporting, and IMO, these numbers reflect that. I stand firm, the press are dirty scumbags, who report the American brands troubles with glee! I can only hope Americans wise up, and they go out of business for good!

 

Saturn up 66.7%! Wow.

 

It is hard to tell the full story from these numbers in many respects. Overall car sales for GM were down 8%, in this was a 13% reduction in daily rental, a 1% increase in retail sales, and an increase in non daily rental fleet of 5%. Lots of moving parts. Both good and bad news here. Bad is the overall decrease in car sales, good is the retail and non-rental fleet is better margins and decreasing rental fleet eventually should help residual value.

They should break rental from retail in the numbers, that would give a much better picture of what is happening under the covers.

 

That's why I mentioned in my initial post that the trucks were carrying along the load. Hopefully with the winter months gas prices stay low until GM can get their revamped mid-size cars introduced and for sale for public consumption.

The CTS is really not going to make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things.

The Malibu is where it is at. It MUST make a huge splash. It MUST wow the import buyers, but more important it MUST take the media by storm. In a way that the GMT900's have, but times twenty.

By this time next year GM will have the Malibu hybrid, the Aura hybrid, the new Saturn hybrid, plus the GMT900 hybrids.

That's perfect timing in my opinion because gas prices are sure to rise once more in the summer months.

Imagine the commercials. The only hybrid powertrain to carry a 10yr/100k powertrain warranty. That's saying something.

 

Lets hear it for the F*ckin' Lucerne!!! Also lets get that Epsilon based Lacrosse on the road quickly!

 

The press is starting to back off GM, so it's not all doom & gloom.

In my post, just wanted to point out that GM's story is very mixed. While GM's trucks have staged an imprseeive comeback, if you remove the Lecerne and Aura (both are powering their divisions revival), the car scene isn't very impressive..... especially when you look at Toyota's gains.... almost all in car sales!

Good news is the upcoming Malibu. I'm getting a feeling it's going to be a home run. I agree that the new CTS isn't going to influence much. The current CTS is still pretty popular, even with the sales drop. STS needs more help IMO.

 

What's impressive is there arent any mid and low level trucks being delivered that I can tell. Should make for a stellar 4th quarter financial report.

 

I think there is a very important point not being considerd here...

Forgive me for not looking up the specific numbers but if memory serves, November 2005 (which is what the gains are being computed against - at least that is the usual method for computing these numbers) was one of the worst if not the worst months for sales in GM's history.

So, while it is definetly good news that their sales are up, that news should be tempered with an understanding of where they are "up" from to get a better picture of where GM is at the moment.

That said, if gas prices stay under control and the economy doesn't take a nose dive anytime soon, things should continue to improve for the industry overall, including GM.

 

Didn't we also still have employee pricing and Red Tag deals go thourgh Christmas last year along with 0% financing? None of which were offered last month.

 

I can't say specifically for those two deals but at least most incentives were gone by 10/31/05 which was one of the primary reasons given, at the time, for the very low November '05 sales.

 

Last year after Employee Pricing was rough to say the least, but at the very least a positive trend is showing it's hand.