Vehicle Sales

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. posted higher-than-expected December sales, benefiting from strong truck demand and big discounts in the auto industry's second-best U.S. sales year.GM said yesterday that its domestic sales rose 2.8 percent. That beat estimates of a 4.6 percent decline and pushed its stock to a 52-week high. GM's stock, up about 10 percent since Monday, rose $3.4375 to close at $78.0625.Toyota shares surged 19 percent yesterday as its Camry sedan captured top-selling U.S. car honors for 1998, surpassing Honda's Accord again.

DETROIT -- AutoNation Inc., the world's largest automotive retailer, introduced a new online buying service yesterday to capture part of a market forecast to explode from 15,000 vehicle sales this year to 500,000 in 2003.AutoNationDirect.com is now available in the Tampa, Fla., area. Customers can reserve a vehicle for a test drive, withdraw money from their bank for a deposit and complete loan applications online. A nearby dealer would then deliver the vehicle to the customer's home.AutoNation expects to generate $750 million in online sales this year, then double that in each of the next two years, said Steven Berrard, AutoNation's co-chief executive officer with Wayne Huizenga.

Maryland new-car dealers sold more vehicles last month than in any November since 1995, according to figures released yesterday by the state Motor Vehicle Administration.The 6.9 percent increase in sales here also helped put dealers across the nation on track to their second-best sales year ever."There's no doubt about it, sales were very strong last month," said Jerome H. Fader, president of Heritage Automotive Group of Owings Mills, one of the state's largest auto dealers with 24 dealerships.

Maryland new car and truck dealers ended a three-month run of higher sales in August when vehicle deliveries dropped 10.3 percent below the corresponding period of the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration.The decline compared to a drop of 6.6 percent in vehicle sales for the entire U.S. industry, due primarily to the strike at General Motors Corp.Noting that auto sales in Maryland were strong in June and July, Peter Kitzmiller, president of the Maryland New Car and Truck Dealers Association, said that incentive programs offered by the manufacturers to boost sales in early summer took away some of the August business.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. yesterday reported higher May U.S. vehicle sales as price discounts and a strong economy raised expectations that industrywide sales had hit their strongest monthly pace of the 1990s.GM sales rose 13 percent and Ford's rose 2 percent from May 1997, both better than expected. Chrysler Corp. reported a 27 percent increase. Toyota Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. also rose, and industry sales were up 16 percent through yesterday.May's annual selling rate is expected to exceed December's 16.2 million, the highest since January 1990.

DEARBORN, Mich. -- Ford Motor Co.'s U.S. car and truck sales fell 4.3 percent in July as lower car sales and a cutback in price discounts offset a modest increase in truck demand.The second-largest automaker said yesterday that truck sales were 5.2 percent higher than in the same period a year ago, at 214,235 vehicles, while car sales fell 17 percent to 128,948. Analysts had expected Ford's sales to be little changed.The results come in what is expected to be one of the year's slowest sales months, a result of the strikes at General Motors Corp.

The traditional spring new-car buying spree, which has been absent in Maryland in recent years, showed signs of returning last month as dealers posted a 14.5 percent gain in vehicle sales."

For the nation as a whole, just about everyone agrees: New car sales are expected to be flat this year. In Maryland, though, the outlook is not so clear.State dealers could follow the national pattern or break out of their long slump to post a healthy gain in vehicle sales."I'm optimistic about 1997," said Jacob J. Cohen, a partner and head of the automotive division at Walpert, Smullian & Blumenthal, a Towson accounting and management consulting company."I think sales will be up, along with the bottom-line profits of most dealers," said Cohen, whose company represents about a third of the state's 350 new car dealers.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. said yesterday that its U.S. vehicle sales fell 13 percent in June, continuing a pattern of lower demand industrywide because of strikes, competition from used-car sales, and tapped-out consumers.GM's decline from the same month a year ago was greater than expected. It follows Chrysler Corp.'s report earlier in the week that its sales fell 4 percent and Toyota Motor Corp.'s 2.3 percent decline.Industry sales this year to date are 1.9 percent below 1996 levels, despite larger incentives.

The spring new-car buying spree in Maryland continued last month as dealers enjoyed a nearly 6 percent jump in sales and posted their first back-to-back monthly gains in more than two years."

The major automobile makers posted further sales declines in April on Friday, punctuating a brutal week for an industry that saw one of its largest companies plunge into bankruptcy and signs that a similar fate awaits its biggest U.S. player. Chrysler, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday and signed a deal to hand over its management to Fiat, reported Friday that its U.S. vehicle sales plunged 48 percent in April from a year ago. The Auburn Hills, Mich., company sold 76,682 cars, truck and SUVs during the period, a number depressed by a large reduction in fleet sales to rental car companies and government agencies as Chrysler attempts to focus on the consumer market.

DETROIT - Chrysler LLC said yesterday that it would close all 30 of its factories for at least one month, starting at the end of this week, in response to plunging vehicle sales in the United States. The company said the plants, which employ 46,000 union workers, would resume production no sooner than Jan. 19. Some will remain closed for several more weeks. Normally, the Detroit automakers close their plants for about two weeks at the end of the year. In addition, Ford Motor Co. said yesterday evening that it would extend the holiday shutdown at 10 of its North American assembly plants to a third week.

The steep drop in gas prices might not be enough to save Detroit, but cheaper fuel undoubtedly has made it easier for dealers to unload the trucks and sport utility vehicles that have been gathering dust ever since oil's record price spike this past summer. That's not to say automakers are selling more of these vehicles than they were last fall. They're not. Everything from Ford's industry benchmark F-Series pickup to Toyota's venerable Land Cruiser are still seeing big drops from a year ago. But these days, that could be as much a function of the grim economy as anything else.

Upgrades to the MARC system will take longer. Projects to get highways ready for military base expansions will be pushed back. Improvements along U.S. 29 in Howard County will be delayed. These are among the $1.1 billion in hard choices Maryland officials announced yesterday as they cut back transportation spending plans over the next six years to account for drops in state revenues related to high gas prices and a slowing economy. "With gas up to $4 a gallon from $2 a gallon, everybody started driving less," said Gov. Martin O'Malley, saying revenues from gasoline taxes have fallen off as a result.

DETROIT -- With most global automakers coming off a difficult year, Toyota Motor Corp. reported record annual profit yesterday and forecast a slower - but still growing - year to come. Toyota's net income rose 20 percent to 1.64 trillion yen, or $14 billion, for the most recent fiscal year, which ended March 31. It projected profits will rise again in the current year to 1.65 trillion yen, or $14.3 billion, though an executive suggested that management's guidance is intended as the low end of likely results.

DETROIT -- Americans shied away from large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks in April as gasoline prices approached $3 a gallon, and with a battery of new SUVs waiting in the wings, domestic automakers are now facing the very scenario they had hoped to avoid. Despite gains at Toyota and Honda, declines at General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler and Nissan pushed vehicle sales in the United States down 0.1 percent in April, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. General Motors had the biggest drop, selling 7.3 percent fewer vehicles than it did in April 2005.

STUTTGART, Germany - DaimlerChrysler AG said yesterday that its second-quarter earnings rose fivefold as its Chrysler division returned to profit, helped by new models including the 300C sedan and job cuts. Net income rose to 554 million euros ($668 million), or 55 cents a share, from 109 million euros, or 11 cents, a year earlier, chief executive Juergen Schrempp said on a conference call with analysts. Sales gained 9 percent to 37.1 billion euros. DaimlerChrysler expects its full-year operating profit to grow "strongly" as increases at Chrysler and the truck business make up for declines at Mercedes Car Group, Schrempp said.

You could blame it on high gas prices, skittish customers or less-than-generous incentives from car dealers. Vehicle sales have taken an unexpected drop and automakers still haven't figured out why. U.S. sales of new cars and trucks fell 2 percent from last year to 1.44 million vehicles in June, the latest figures available, according to research firm Autodata Corp. The decrease - which produced the worst June in recent years - left dealers scratching their heads and scrambling to offer deals to bring customers back.

SHANGHAI, China - General Motors Corp., the world's biggest automaker, said yesterday that first-quarter sales in China of cars and sport utility vehicles rose by a more-than-expected 54 percent as more people and companies in the world's fastest-growing major economy could afford to buy new vehicles. The maker of Buick cars and Chevrolet sport utility vehicles sold 84,000 vehicles in China in the three months that ended March 31, said Philip Murtaugh, chairman of the company's operations in China.

Spurred on by record incentives, Maryland consumers bought more new cars during August than during any month since last October, according to figures released by the Motor Vehicle Administration. Dealers sold 38,965 new cars and light trucks during August, a gain of 4 percent over a strong August 2001. For dealers, it was their best August since 1991, when the MVA resumed releasing title registration figures, which equate with sales. Anirban Basu, director of applied economics at Towson University's RESI economic research institute, said that while new-car sales are still a leading economic indicator, they are being influenced by the auto manufacturer's zero-percent financing plans and lucrative rebates.