NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Auto sales ended the year stronger than expected, allowing General Motors to post a smaller-than-expected drop in U.S. sales, while Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler reported improved sales.
GM (Research) reported that its U.S. daily sales rate for cars and light trucks fell 6.8 percent in the month to 428,724 total vehicles. Its car sales were off 7.2 percent in the month, while the rate for light trucks, which include pickups, sport/utility vehicles and vans, was off by 5.3 percent.
Paul Ballew, executive director of market and industry analysis, said that GM saw its retail sales pace being about the same as a year ago, and an extra sales day in December 2004 allowed sales to individual customers to be up slightly compared to a year ago. A 20 percent drop in fleet sales to business, particularly to daily rental car companies, was the key to the company's lower sales.
The sales left the nation's largest automaker down 1.3 percent for the year, with 4.7 million vehicles sold in the United States. The drop was due to a 3.8 percent decline in car sales; light trucks edged up 0.6 percent for the year to set an industry record for the fourth straight year.
Ballew said that GM was disappointed by a drop in U.S. market share in 2004, but that the year finished stronger than GM had forecast in the middle of the year. He said that the strength of December sales were much stronger than expected and that it could affect sales in the first quarter.
Ford sales hold firm
Ford (Research), the nation's No. 2 automaker, sold 294,270 new cars and light trucks in the month, up 0.7 percent from the 292,209 sold in the year-earlier period. Light trucks saw a 0.2 percent decline in the month, but car models posted a 3 percent gain.
The car sales gain marked the first year-over-year increase in car sales at Ford since January 2003. Ford executives predicted that car sales would show growth in retail sales to customers in 2005, although a drop in sales to rental car companies could hurt overall sales comparisons.
The stronger-than-expected December still left Ford (Research) with a 4.4 percent decline in sales for the year with 3.3 million vehicles sold in the United States.
For the year, light truck sales were little changed from 2003, coming in at 2.3 million. But Ford posted a 12.9 percent fall in car sales. Some of that drop was due to Ford moving away from sales to the daily car rental industry, which had supported sales numbers but produced little in the way of profit in previous years.
Among its various brands, Ford saw a 2 percent gain in sales in the month, and Volvo posted a 3.9 percent gain. High-end SUV maker Land Rover saw the biggest sales jump, with a 49.4 percent increase in sales over the year-earlier period. But Mercury, Lincoln and Jaguar all posted double-digit percentage declines in sales for the month.
Chrysler '04 sales gain
Daimler Chrysler saw its daily sales pace up 11 percent in December, as the No. 3 automaker was helped by strong sales at its luxury Mercedes Benz brand, where sales gained 23 percent. At its Chrysler Group unit, which includes Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, the daily sales pace gained 5 percent while its overall sales rose 9 percent.
The strong December helped Chrysler Group end the year with U.S. sales up 3 percent to 2.2 million, about the same gain posted by DaimlerChrysler, which sold 2.4 million vehicles overall.
But even with the sales gain, DaimlerChrysler's hold on the No. 3 position in the U.S. market weakened as Toyota Motor Corp (Research)., posted a 10 percent gain for the year to 2.1 million vehicles. It marked the first time Toyota sold more than 2 million U.S. vehicles in a year.
For December Toyota posted an 18 percent gain in its U.S. sales pace to 187,932 vehicles.
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