After reporting that Americans are hanging onto their old cars longer, sales figures for February released this week put an exclamation point on that blog post. In February, car sales dropped the fastest yet since this recession began last fall: down more than 40 percent overall, more than 50 percent at General Motors, and almost 50 percent at Ford. Other automakers with similarly bad results included Mitsubishi (down a little more than 50 percent), and Suzuki (off more than 60 percent). Chrysler sales dropped 44 percent.
The report compared sales in February 2009 with those of last February.
The news was bad all the way around. Subaru was the only automaker with a sales increase: 1.4 percent. A combined drop of less than 1 percent at Hyundai and Kia qualified as good news for the Korean automaker.
Here’s how the February sales broke down:
| Automaker |
Percent change |
| Suzuki | –60.3% |
| General Motors | –53.1% |
| Mitsubishi | –50.8% |
| Ford | –49.5% |
| Chrysler | –44.0% |
| Toyota/Lexus/Scion |
–39.8% |
| Honda/Acura |
–38.0% |
| Nissan/Infiniti |
–37.1% |
| BMW |
–34.6% |
| Madza |
–30.4% |
| Mercedes-Benz |
–20.4% |
| Volkswagen/Audi |
-19.9% |
| Porsche |
-11.5% |
| Hyundai/Kia |
-0.7% |
| Subaru |
1.40% |
| AVERAGE | –41.3% |
SOURCE: Automotive News
The bottom line: Dealers are sitting on lots of new cars waiting for buyers. So the deals will be getting better on them. Check out our advice on how to take advantage of the good deals out there now.
How to buy a car in today’s market
Car-buying tips for getting the best deal today
--Eric Evarts
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