Mixed January for US car retailers as Chrysler and Ford beat forecasts
FIAT-OWNED Chrysler Group posted a 44 per cent rise in US car sales in January, led by gains for its Jeep brand, while its larger domestic rival General Motors lost ground in a month marked by modest growth.
Chrysler’s sales blew past some analysts’ expectations of a 35 per cent increase, demonstrating the unlikely comeback of the smallest US carmaker nearly three years after its taxpayer-funded bankruptcy restructuring.
GM, the largest US carmaker, reported a six per cent drop in US auto sales in January, while Ford Motor posted sales that were seven per cent higher, spurred by a 60 per cent jump in sales of the Focus small car.
So far, the annualised sales rate for January is tracking at 13.7m vehicles, JP Morgan analyst Himanshu Patel wrote in a research note. Patel and other analysts had predicted a 13.5m sales rate for the month.
GM was expected to show a decline from last January, when the automaker offered consumer incentives to jump-start sales. GM sales totalled 167,962 vehicles in January. Some analysts had expected GM to report a nine per cent drop.
Ford, the second biggest US carmaker, sold 136,710 vehicles in January.
VW and Nissan Motor reported gains as well. VW sales rose 48 per cent to 27,209 vehicles, buoyed by the introduction of its Passat sedan. Nissan sales in the US rose 10.4 per cent to 79,313.