APRIL SALES IRONY

American automobile sales people will soon be scratching the bottom of the barrel if things don't turn around. April was a terrible month for new vehicle sales. March was bad, too. February was worse than anticipated. What will May bring?  

The Good Car Guy has given a fairly thorough rundown of how automotive sales panned out in April, but in case you missed it, follow this link which'll link you to other posts as well. Rather than dwell on simple negativity on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, here are a few surprising, ironic, alarming, or pleasant figures. Call it what you'd like.

Hummer isn't manufacturing the trendiest fashion for 2008. The H2 and H3 weren't exceedingly pleasant to drive in 2007, and growing anti-war sentiment (yep, it's true) and rising fuel prices aren't going to help their cause. But, even with Hummer's 50% drop in American SUV sales compared with the previous April, the company still manages to top Saab - another General Motors product - by 800 vehicles in the fourth month of 2008.

Toyota is painted with a slimy brush even though they sold more vehicles this April than they managed to last year. That's because there were more days available to dealerships to actually sell cars this year; two extra in fact. Don't question Toyota's dominance, though. If Volkswagen, a major world automotive player, had sold 10 times more vehicles in April than their 19,415 total, VW would still trail Toyota by 200 vehicles. 

Hyundai sales tumbled over 7% in the comparison with the same period of last year. Sounds like bad news, doesn't it? On the other hand, Korea can still look to Hyundai to outsell Subaru; Suzuki, and Mitsubishi combined.

45,353 more vehicles were sold by Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep last April than were last month. (Oops, how did pure negativity find its way in to this post?)

For Lincoln to have reached its April/07 totals, almost every April/08 Jaguar customer would've had to buy 

a Lincoln instead. Although that sounds like bad news for both companies (formerly hosts to the same platform that bore the Jaguar S-Type and Lincoln LS), this shows improvement on Jaguar's part. Jaguar sales were up a few hundred this April.

Now that India-based Tata Motors is taking control of Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company, what does their sales trending say about Tata's timing? Last April, the two British brands combined for 5,635 sales in the United States. During April of 2008, only 4,342 Landies and Jags went out dealer doors.