Though not the biggest drop in the industry, General Motors’ 41 percent decrease in November new car sales represented a massive decline in interest in the automaker’s brands. Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice president of North American sales, wasn’t shy about stating that fears of a GM bankruptcy kept potential buyers out of showrooms.
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that it has affected business,” LaNeve said yesterday in a conference call with the media.
CNW Marketing Research reports that 20 to 30 percent of new car shoppers are avoiding GM, as well as Ford and Chrysler , because of the automakers’ current financial conditions.
LaNeve said that those figures “could be higher.”
Still, LaNeve blamed the drop in sales more on the credit crash than fear of bankruptcy among consumers. GM didn’t lease a single car in November and GMAC, the automaker’s Cerberus-controlled credit arm, financed only a handful of the new cars sold. Most GM buyers took advantage of the automaker’s beefed up bank loan searching services that help mate buyers with banks willing to loan.
LaNeve said that GM’s dealers are begging the automaker to get back into the leasing business.
“We are trying to figure out how to do that,” he said.
But GM certainly wasn’t the only automaker with sales woes in November. Toyota , which launched a massive zero percent financing campaign, saw sales drop 34 percent, and Nissan , which launched a new sub-$10,000 version of its Versa, recorded a hefty 42 percent drop.
