Thanks President Obama!
GM June sales up 10%, despite Cadillac stumble
General Motors, the biggest U.S. automaker, outperformed the overall industry sales rise in June of 7% with a 10.2% increase for the month, despite a stumble by its Cadillac brand.
For the first half of the year, GM sales are up 16.8%.
The star of GM's show was Chevrolet's Cruze. The compact sedan that replaced the Cobalt snagged nearly 25,000 buyers last month -- more than twice what Cobalt did a year ago. For the half-year, Cruze sales were 58.9% better than Cobalt's a year ago.
"As it stands now, it looks like Chevy Cruze will be the best-selling car in the industry for the first time ever," says Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Jessica Caldwell.
The gain is more impressive when you consider that last year, GM sales included tallies from Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn. GM sold Saab and discontinued the others.
Even so, the modest gain "is lower than we expected," says Edmunds.com senior analyst Michelle Krebs. That's apparently because GM cut back more on discount sales to rental-car fleets. It could do that, Krebs says, because the small cars usually provided to fleets are popular among individual buyers seeking lower prices and higher mileage.
Also expecting a higher total was Himanshu Patel, auto industry analyst at J.P. Morgan, but he said in a note to clients that the mix of high-profit full-size trucks improved and that is "encouraging." He says the combination of full-size pickups and big SUVs accounted for 28.6% of GM's June sales, up from 25.4% in May./p>
Patel also notes that GM didn't boost the totals with a rebate binge., "June incentives were 5% to 6% lower than May, and were roughly in line with the industry average as a % of ATP (actual transaction price)."
GMC, the company's truck brand, showed the biggest percentage gain -- up 14.9% from June a year earlier. For the half-year, Buick is the star -- up 33.7%.
Led by Cruze, Chevrolet continues to be GM's main brand by far, posting 72.8% of GM's total sales. Chevy was up 10.9% in June. Cadillac was down 7.9%.
Chevy Equinox SUV jumped 56.3% as SUV buyers sought modest-size models with better fuel economy to cope with gasoline prices that, though falling, remained high.
GMC's Terrain, a version of the Chevy Equinox SUV, was the big gainer for GMC, but the full-size Sierra pickup continued to be the best-selling model. Sierra sales rose 8.2%.
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