The hype over the last month has been that the future is held by car manufacturers who make smaller more fuel efficient vehicles, however it was General Motors who came out on top, with the highest sales in June. There had been fears that with plummeting auto sales and skyrocketing oil prices, GM's position would be taken over by Toyota, with its fleet of smaller efficient cars.
Nonetheless, GM managed to pull through with an 18% drop in sales in comparison to June last year, mainly due to a clearance sale with very favourable financing options, which boosted their sales near the end of the month. In relative terms, GM's sales were only down 8%, as June 2008 had 3 less sale days than June 2007. And with that GM managed to push through to first position in sales, ahead of Toyota, which was down by 21% in sales.
It is something of a surprise, seeing as the trend over the last month has been declining sales for most companies and a tendency to market more efficient vehicles, however this small decrease in sales may be what Honda was hoping for, as it is the only company that is increasing its production of pickup trucks and vehicles of that size category.
Will this decline end? Even though sales aren't dropping as much as one would expect, is it really viable for us to continue to use cars at the same rate and in the same way we have been doing for the last 100 years, especially with the developments in oil and raw material prices ?
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