Many Bright Spots In GM's January Sales Report

[Gorehamj]

John Goreham
Contributing Writer, GM-Trucks.com
2-1-2017

The sales reports coming from automakers this month are a bit different than those we have been seeing for the past few years. The tipping point many automakers have been expecting seems to have arrived, but that is just a growth slowdown. Sales overall are strong.

 

GM's overall sales were down about four percent over last January. Not bad compared to Toyota's 11% drop. The bigger SUVs and crossovers are the sales champs this month with Suburban and Acadia up. Trucks are steady and the Colorado's expanded production capacity now can exceed demand. Sales were up for Colorado over last January, but the truck has seen higher sales months. Sierra and Silverado were down a bit, but not by much.

 

Looking on the bright side of slow car sales; Have you ever wanted a Camaro or CTS? Now is the time to act. Both are down more than 30% in sales. That report we posted about the factory shutting down to allow inventory to burn off was not incorrect. That was not a holiday line maintenance shutdown. CTS is down to less than 700 cars per month. Yikes! The Impala has fallen back to under 6K cars per month, about a quarter of the sales the Camry posts. Amazingly, the Impala fell by 40%. That is hard to believe.

 

Bucking the slowdown in cars is the Chevy Cruze. Its 19K in January sales put it close to the Civic and Corolla now. Go Cruze!

 

EVs could not be farther from trucks, but in case you are a closet fan (we're joking), the Bolt and Volt outsold those whipper snappers over at Tesla this month. EV sales trickle in, but the Volt could be the number one EV for sales this year so far and the Bolt number three behind the Prius Prime. You heard that right, the Tesla models are not even on the podium this month with neither breaking 1,000 in January*.

 

* Our Tesla sales source is Inside EVs.

[Colossus]

The previous gen Impala which was being produced as the Impala Limited or Classic for fleet services only (Cab/Taxi/Law Enforcement) saw it's last year for 2016, so that will cut into the Impala numbers as well, as GM combined the classic and the current gen sales for the total impala number. It really is a shame that the 2014+ generation Impala is not selling all that well, as it is a very nice vehicle, at least on the inside.

[HondaHawkGT]

The new Impala is a great full-size car. Sedan sales have been hit hard due to customers flocking to crossover SUV's and trucks. It's nice to see that GM hasn't loaded up on fleet sales like they used to. It keeps profit margins up and improves residual values for us.

 

It's surprising to see GM full-size truck sales slip like they have. I guess the 2016 refresh/facelift hasn't helped to keep sales up.