Another good month for Detroit—and another good reason for local and national media to keep the ball rolling in their pitches to marketing managers and local dealer associations: Ford reported sales were up 24% in November compared to a year ago. The automaker says it’s on track to increase market share for the second year in a row, too. Ford sold 147,338 vehicles in November, with year-to-date sales totaling 1.74 million vehicles and growing at a pace double the industry average.
GM also expects to gain market share by the year’s end with its sales up 20.8% for its four core brands in November compared with a year ago. Factoring in brands that have been dropped, GM saw an 11.4% increase in total sales for the month compared to a year ago, to 168,704 vehicles. Retail sales, which include fleet vehicles, for all eight brands were 20% compared to a year earlier.
However, GM’s four brands it is keeping – Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac — reported a decline of 9% from October. Broken down, the fastest growing brand was Buick, which was up 36% for the month compared to November 2009 and 54% YTD. Cadillac saw a 21% increase compared to a year ago. Chevrolet was up 18%; GMC was up 30%, said The Detroit News.
“Each brand came to the party in November,” said Don Johnson, GM VP/U.S. sales operations in a statement. “These results show that our brands continue to gain momentum with consumers who want stylish, fuel-efficient vehicles.”
RBR-TVBR observation: Government bailout or not—these are good numbers for Ford and GM, especially given the recession. As mentioned above, the pitch to local dealer associations is to show how both brands have increased advertising over the past months and produced solid results. Keeping that momentum going should be backed with more advertising. It’s a cause-and effect relationship.
