There are still a few selling days remaining in the month, but General Motors says October could mark the company’s first year-on-year sales increase in 21 months. General Motors hasn’t posted a year-on-year sales increase since January 2008.
GM says it has a “good chance” of posting its first sales increase in nearly two years, but the Detroit automaker isn’t pooping the champagne bottles just yet. “It’s still pretty bad. This is still levels we haven’t seen since the early ’80s,” Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s executive director of global market and industry analysis, told Automotive News. “But clearly it’s better than where we’ve been.”
On the whole, GM expects October’s annualized sales rate to rebound to 10.5 million units. Although not a tremendous figure, that rate would represent that highest annualized rate since October 2008 – excluding July and August sales figures that were buoyed by the government’s cash for clunkers program.
While the market is still clearly depressed, we expect to see more year-on-year sales increases moving forward. Sales fell off a cliff in October 2008 so even relatively modest sales figures should net an overall year-on-year sales increase for the foreseeable future.
