GM, Ford, Chrysler Lose Sales of 1 Million Pickups, SUVs a Year

[steinravnik]

GM, Ford, Chrysler Lose Sales of 1 Million Pickups, SUVs a Year



June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Ken Thompson never had much trouble selling Silverado pickups at Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine, Texas, the largest U.S. truck dealership. Today, at the 23-acre, 2,000-vehicle lot near Dallas, customers walk away from deals at $16,988, a third off the sticker price, he says.

``It's the deepest discount we've seen in many months,'' says Thompson, the manager of fleet sales. The problem isn't sticker shock, he says. It's pump paralysis. ``You fill up one of these and it costs over $100,'' Thompson says.

Multiply Classic's slump by declines at the 14,293 other General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC dealerships in the U.S., and the scale of the financial disaster facing them emerges. Pickups and the larger lines of sport-utility vehicles aren't just Detroit's biggest chunk of revenue, they have generated almost all of the industry's operating income, says John Casesa, an analyst for Casesa Shapiro Group in New York.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...y24&refer=home

[PhishPhood]

I did this analysis at the end of 2007 and posted the results here in several places. Since the end of 2003 all the BOF vehicle makers together lost about 1.0 million units of sales through Dec 07. In the first 5 months the pace has picked up and they may have lost another 400,000 units.

Stats coming at the end of this month for the first half of 08.