Summary
The first quarter of 2009 is history. Good riddance! But we can't escape the auto sales numbers.
Analysis
Lets take a final look at the auto sales numbers from the first quarter of 2009.
Was there anything good about the quarter? Since we're grasping at straws, lets note that February's sales were better than January and March's was better than February's. But, that's happened every year since 1991. Aside from that, the quarter was awful.
Sales declined 38.4%, and that followed a 8% dip in the first quarter of 2008. The Detroit 3's domestic sales fell an astounding 46.2%. Import brand sales were down 30.6%--not as bad as Detroit's but not good.
GM was the sickest of the sick in the first quarter, down 48.8%. Toyota led the Japanese in futility with a loss of 37.1%.
The Detroit 3 still haven't returned to the car business. They sold only 345,755 cars in three months, down 49.4% from 2008. Even more distressing, Detroit had only 30.2% of the nation's car sales in the quarter. Bad things happen when you ignore cars for a decade and a half as Ford, GM and Chrysler did.
Market share? You don't want to know. The Detroit 3 had only 43.8% of U.S. cars and light-truck sales in the quarter. That means 56.2% of the market is controlled by foreign companies. Remember when GM alone had over 50% of the market?
Bad as the quarter was for the D 3, they still hold the top two spots in sales. At the top of the heap, as it has been for more than 30 years, was the Ford F-Series truck. The Chevrolet Silverado pickup was second, a far distant second.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the year-ago sales numbers for the two trucks were a total of 270,917, this year, 148,862, a drop of 44.9%.
GM was the leading seller of cars and trucks in the U.S. in the first quarter with a lead of 50,031 over Toyota, which moved ahead of Ford to take second place. Last year GM led Toyota by 228,629 at this point.
Still nine months to go, but it's frightrening. A foreign automaker as the nation's best seller would be the crowning indignity for a domestic industry that already is gasping for air.
