“Consumer preference for SUVs and pickup trucks continued unabated in April and helped to propel us to our strongest April sales in 11 years”, Reid Bigland, head of USA sales for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said in a statement. The Dodge and Chrysler brands both saw year over year declines in April, but with the impressive new Pacifica minivan officially reaching buyers for the first time last month, we are likely to see a boom in Chrysler brand sales from the new minivan – all while the existing minivans continue to sell very well.
Advertisement
Fiat Chrysler posted a 6 percent gain.
Ford SUV sales totaled 65,474 vehicles in the April 2016 – the best April in company history.
General Motors Co.’s USA sales fell 3.5% in the month due to a pullback on fleet business.
USA auto sales hit a record of 17.5 million previous year.
Industry volume hit 1.5 million vehicles last month, a 3.6% increase from a year earlier, according to data provider Autodata Corp., for a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 17.4 million vehicles that puts auto makers on track for a second consecutive annual sales record.
While this increase in auto sales numbers is fascinating, automakers should still be alarmed, as reported by Washington Post.
Auto and truck sales are coming in at a pace that could make this the best April ever. Fiat Chrysler sales rose 6 percent.
In 2005, auto sales hiked due to automakers offering huge discounts and lease deals in hopes to keep their manufacturing plants running.
The country’s statistics bureau reported last month that first-quarter gross domestic product grew at its slowest quarter-on-quarter pace since 2010.
Auto sales have been boosted by a number of factors: low gas prices, more jobs and loose lending standards, among them. Explorer drove the gains, reporting a 22 percent increase versus a year ago.
Sales of Buicks, GM’s largest brand in China, rose 56% from April 2015 to 98,992, led by the Excelle GT sedan and Envision SUV, which will be introduced in the USA this summer. In April, US auto makers also got the benefit from an extra selling day as well as Easter holiday in March, providing five full weekends to make sales. Total sales were $126 billion, a drop of 8 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Sales to individual consumers also appear to be slowing, so automakers are relying more on less-profitable sales to rental-car companies and other fleets.
For now, the sales outlook is still mostly sunny. “GM bucked the industry trend with flat year-over incentives, we are managing with lean inventories and our Commercial and Government fleet business is growing”.
Advertisement
The result included a 7.5% increase in daily sales of light-duty versions of the pickup, a rise attributed in part to the F-Series receiving a top safety rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which LaNeve says generated considerable social-media buzz and showroom traffic in April. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.
