Whoa: April Sales Numbers

Big surprise; red ink continues to rule for April's car sales numbers. While the economic crisis may be easing, sales are still down across the board.  Who would have thought? (Sarcasm intended).

Big surprise; red ink continues to rule for April's car sales numbers. While the economic crisis may be easing, sales are still down across the board.  Who would have thought? (Sarcasm intended). However, there was some interesting facts in April's sales data dump though, so let's take a look.

Every single automaker has experienced declining sales this month in comparison with with April 2008 (year-over-year). That includes brands that have been faring better (even posting increases) this year like Subaru, Hyundai and Kia.

They're still outperforming the rest of the market though, with sales at Hyundai down by 13.56% and at Kia, down 14.8%. That number was good enough to gain market share and as a result Hyundai-Kia pulled ahead of Nissan as the sixth largest automaker in the United States.

The most surprising numbers are the individual brand rankings! It looks like Ford product mix, advertising and a comparative lack of doomsday talk are having an effect on it's sales relative to others in the market. Ford,  albeit by a very small margin, is now the top selling brand in the country! Sales came in at 116,263 compared to No. 2 Chevrolet's 115,265 and No. 3 Toyota's 112,345. The top 3 are all neck and neck, very close to each other.

The shocker? Toyota's sales numbers are down a whopping -42.19% and the brand has slid to No. 3. Just a year ago, Chevrolet and Toyota were battling it out for the No. 1 brand in America title. Now Toyota's whopping -41.87% company-wide decline is the largest of any of the automakers save for Chrysler, LLC. In addition, Toyota is back to Number 3 in the United States after pushing out Ford for that spot.

They are definitely hurting. The Top 3 rankings for April work out like this: 1. General Motors Corp. at 173,007 (down -33.69%), 2. Ford Motor Company at 134,401 (down 31.56%) and 3. Toyota Motor Corp. clocking in at 126, 540 (down 41.87%).

It's clear this turmoil in the auto industry is reordering the sales charts, with Toyota taking big blows. Once the market recovers again, I wonder who the eventual sales winners and losers will turn out to be. I'm quite confident Ford will be looking good and if it survives without government help, will emerge much stronger as a result of this.

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