General Motors Corp. said Wednesday that sales of cars and light trucks fell 7.1 percent in February, more than expected, tempering improvements elsewhere in the industry.
GM’s results followed better-than-expected reports from Ford Motor Co., which said its sales rose 0.6 percent, and Chrysler Corp., which posted a 3.1 percent gain Tuesday.
February’s industrywide annual sales rate fell to 15.0 million units from 15.1 million a year earlier; a 2 percent drop had been expected.
GM said February sales of vehicles built in North America fell to 324,689, more than the 3 percent decline analysts expected. Car sales fell 14 percent, to 170,915, more than the expected 10 percent decline. Truck sales rose 2.2 percent, a bit above expectations.
The decline was concentrated in small cars, which make up one in every four cars GM sells. Cavalier sales fell 33 percent. Saturn was down 21 percent. Prizm fell 30 percent.
Consumers with moderate incomes are turning increasingly to used midsize cars and trucks, rather than to brand-new small cars, which long had attracted such buyers.
The company’s redesigned midsize cars provided a bright spot. Sales of five models–the Intrigue, the Cutlass, the Malibu, the Century and the Regal–rose 40 percent in February over the eight models they replaced. The new models use fewer parts and require fewer assembly hours than the models they replaced.
Ford’s sales of domestically built vehicles rose 0.6 percent, to 291,572 from 289,777 in the year-earlier month, beating estimates that sales would drop 2 percent. Car sales rose 3.6 percent, to 131,243, more than expected; truck sales fell 1.7 percent, to 160,329, matching expectations.
F-series pickup sales fell 11 percent, in part because Ford’s assembly plant in Louisville just started building the redesigned F Series Super Duty pickups.
Sales of the Villager mini-van, hurt by lack of a fourth door behind the driver, fell 47 percent. The Expedition sport-utility vehicle rose 60 percent from February 1997, when a supplier strike slowed sales.
On the car side, Taurus sales rose 20 percent and Contour rose 43 percent as Ford boosted deliveries to rental companies and other fleet operators.
