For the first time all year, not one but two Detroit brands outsold Toyota. Chevrolet and Ford both posted brand sales that exceeded Toyota’s figures, proving that there are some silver linings, at least in Detroit, in the continuously cloudy new car market in the United States.
Both Chevrolet and Ford outsold Toyota for the first time in 2009. Toyota’s 112,345 cars and trucks couldn’t match Chevrolet’s 115,265 or Ford’s 116,263.
Toyota wasn’t the only Japanese automaker to post a bigger-than-expected sales decrease; Nissan posted its biggest decline of the year and Subaru posted its first sales slide this year.
We’ll continue to update this space as more automakers release their sales figures. It’s expected that the market as a whole was down more than 30 percent in April 2009 compared to the year prior. Remember that these figures are to be compared against April, 2008, sales. If you’re curious about market trends, you’ll want to compare to January, February and March figures.
Read Article