Consumers continued to defy Washington’s demand that they buy small cars, as July SUV sales hit 50 percent of market share – their highest percentage in three years.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the truck surge benefited GM and Chrysler – the very firms that Washington bailed out last year even as the White House vowed to transform the companies into manufacturers of planet-saving small cars. Instead, the surge in truck sales is bringing in needed profits as the automakers strain to repay taxpayers. Chevy Tahoe sales, for example, were up 65 percent; the Chevy Silverado: 25 percent.<\/p>\n
Conversely, Toyota and Honda saw sales drop from a year ago, when sales figures were distorted by the Cash for Clunkers program that discriminated in favor of foreign-badged, higher-mpg vehicles. “Honda sold just over 48,000 Civics and Accords in July, down from nearly 60,000 Accords and Civics the previous July, as Cash for Clunkers began,” reports Automotive News.<\/p>\n
Nissan saw substantial gains of 15 percent – again thanks to trucks. “The Nissan Rogue continues to set new sales records with its best month since launch,” said a spokesman. “In fact, all of Nissan’s crossovers, trucks and SUVs showed substantial gains over last July.”<\/p>\n
Ford? President Obama praised its new small cars last month in Michigan, but the company’s July gain of three percent was led by sales of pickup trucks – up 39 percent from the same month last year. Ford sold more than 50,000 gas-guzzling pickups in July alone – five times the number of plug-in Chevy Colts expected to sell in a year.<\/p>\n
“Customers are rewarding Ford for providing the performance they want and the fuel economy they need,” spun Ford marketing. Whatever. The company then went on to cheer a 65 percent sales gain in its new SuperDuty heavy truck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consumers continued to defy Washington’s demand that they buy small cars, as July SUV sales hit 50 percent of market share – their highest percentage in three years. Ironically, the truck surge benefited GM and Chrysler – the very firms that Washington bailed out last year even as the White House vowed to transform the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5461,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5460\/revisions\/5461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}