US car sales plummet in April

The global economic downturn has resulted in a slump in demand for big-ticket items, such as cars and this is still the case for US carmakers after Chrysler reported a 48% decline in April sales compared with April 2008.

Sales at Ford were down nearly 32% while General Motors (GM) sales were down 34%.

The latter, along with Chrysler, have been instructed by the Government to restructure the business in order to achieve multi-billion dollar loans.

Last week, Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a procedure which will see the company gain protection from its creditors and according to President Obama, give the company “a new lease of life.”

GM has a deadline of 1 June to restructure the business in order to obtain state loans, and avoid needing bankruptcy protection.

Returning to the car market, sales at Japan’s Toyota fell 42%, and its poor performance meant it lost the number two spot to Ford for the first time in over a year.

Ford increased market share, helped partly by sales of its Fusion model. Ford increased its share to 15.8% of the US market, up from 15.1% in April of 2008.

Honda performed slightly better with sales down 25% and improved its market share to 12.3%, up from 10.8% in April last year.

Figures relating to market share are in accordance with statistics from Autodata.

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