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GM sells 8.35 million vehicles in 2008, down 11% on previous year

 
1 1,065 views Jan 21, 2009

Over half of the market is looking for a new car in the next two years

Over half of the market is looking for a new car in the next two years

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GM has announced today that its global sales tally for 2008 has come in at 8.35 million vehicles, which represents a 10.8% decline on 2007’s levels and a substantial 616,000 units short of Toyota’s tally over the same period. Toyota also experienced a sales decline over 2008, with its total dropping 4% over the course of the year to end at 8.97 million units.

In 2008, GM sold 5.37 million vehicles outside the U.S., accounting for 64% of total global sales volume compared with 59% a year ago. This represents a 22.7% decline in sales for GM in the U.S., its single biggest market. Toyota saw a 15.4% decline.

The highlight of GM's U.S. sales performance was the Chevrolet Malibu sedan, which achieved the highest percentage gain in annual sales volume (39%) of any of the top-20 selling vehicles in the country.

Despite achieving record sales in other markets, such as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions, GM could not escape the toll global economic pressures have had on its overall results. Once again, challenges in the global financial markets, including credit tightening, the drop in commodity prices, and economic uncertainty were cited as reasons for the decline.

Incidentally, GM had still labelled itself as the “annual global industry sales leader for 77 years” on its website at the time of today’s announcement.



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Comment (1)

  1. ma_www.mywheelsonwalls.com avatar www.mywheelsonwalls.com Posted: 1/21/2009 11:11am PST

    Not bad news considering the industry as a whole is off 40% and as high as 60% if your Bentley!

    I think you'll find this year that Toyota and Honda will be in serious trouble as their sense of urgency is no where as high as it is at the big three!! Lets face it which company out there can say they had a 39% sales gain? Even the precious little Prius had trouble getting off of dealers lots....
     
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