Audi expects to finish off the first three months of the year with robust sales following a good performance in February.

“We are on course for a strong first quarter and that is mainly thanks to our leading position in China and western Europe,” Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer said in a statement today.
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General Motors announced on Thursday a more confident forecast for U.S. industry sales this year and said it expects to end January with higher sales compared with a year ago.

GM projects the industry would sell 11.5 million to 12 million vehicles nationwide this year, up from the previous projection of 11 million to 12 million sales, according to Mike DiGiovanni, executive director of global market and industry analysis.

The Detroit automaker strengthened its forecast because of signs that the economy is strengthening, he said.

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Are you considering to buy a truck or a light vehicle? Now, we got a reports from editor of freep.com. Details as below:

Several categories of new vehicles have gained market share over the past four years, while others have lost favor.

Small car sales are up more than a third, and middle cars are up by more than a fifth.

One reason why Asian automakers now have a higher U.S. new light vehicle share (48% October 2009 YTD, according to Autodata, Inc.) than either the domestics (44%) or Europeans (8%) is that, for many years, Asian automakers have offered a wide array of competitive products in all three of these flourishing categories.
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Ford Motor Co. posted a surprise net profit of $997 million in the third quarter and its cash position turned positive, reversing a long stretch of cash burn.

Ford’s pre-tax operating profit of $1.1 billion for the quarter marked its first quarter in the black on that basis since early 2008. The automaker ended the quarter with $23.8 billion in cash, up $2.8 billion from the end of the second quarter.

Its North American unit posted a pre-tax operating profit of $357 million, for its first positive quarter since the first three months of 2005.
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Though this October month still not over, and the U.S automakers’ official October sales result won’t be reported until next Tuesday, GM officials said Wednesday that they expect first monthly sales increase after 21 months drop.

Susan Docherty, GM’s new vice president of U.S. sales, touted the uptick but noted that a lot more work lies ahead for the company, whose U.S. sales are still down 36.3% through September. “We’re here to talk about progress,” she said.

GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson, visiting Washington, D.C., said that recently enacted pay changes for executives were fair, and he didn’t argue with ex-auto task force chief Steve Rattner’s criticisms of pre-bankruptcy GM’s management as “stunningly poor.”

“There was a lot of truth in it,” he told the Associated Press. “We’ve got to change.”
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October new-vehicle retail sales are expected to decline only 6 percent compared with one year ago–the first single-digit decline since May 2008, according to J.D. Power and Associates, which gathers real-time transaction data from more than 8,900 franchisees across the United States.

This decline marks the most significant improvement in 17 months, excluding August 2009 when year-over-year sales were up 13 percent due to the CARS program.

October new-vehicle retail sales are expected to come in at 651,600 units, which represent a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) of 8.3 million units. With fleet volume down only 4 percent from one year ago, total sales for October are projected to come in at 816,600 units, down 6 percent from October 2008.
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Reports from autonews.com that Ford Motor Co. is gaining on Honda Motor Co. for the No. 2 spot among hybrid vehicle sellers in the United States.

Toyota Motor Corp. leads all automakers in U.S. hybrid sales by a wide margin, selling more than all of its rivals combined.

Paced by the Ford Fusion and Escape hybrids, Ford sold 26,016 hybrid vehicles during the first nine months of 2009 — a 73 percent gain in hybrid vehicle sales compared with the same period a year ago, according to figures compiled by the Automotive News Data Center.
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Ford Motor Company’s hybrid vehicle sales have risen 73 percent this year in sharp contrast to a 14-percent decline in hybrid sales across the industry.

The fuel economy and durability of hybrid versions of Ford Fusion and Escape, Mercury Milan and Mariner also are winning over large numbers of conquest customers, many of whom are previous import owners. Through September, Ford has sold 26,016 hybrid vehicles, up 73 percent versus the same period in 2008, according to figures from Autodata Inc.
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Once again, the 2010 Toyota prius got the top spot of september’s vehicle sales in Japan, boosted by the tax breaks and government incentives for green vehicles.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest automaker, sold 31,758 Prius cars last month, according to the Japan Automobile Dealers Association.

Toyota said this week there was a backlog of Prius orders, numbering in the several thousands. Customers ordering the cars now won’t get them delivered until after May 2010. Some ecological subsidies are scheduled to end March 31, 2010.

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The biggest automakers posted some of the sharpest U.S. sales declines in September as demand dropped to its lowest level since April in the aftermath of the cash-for-clunkers program.

The seasonally adjusted annual sales rate was 9.51 million units. After thronging dealerships during the government incentive and sending August demand to the year’s high of 13.7 million, consumers backed off in September, dropping the sales rate slightly below June’s 9.55 million.

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Clunker hangover hammers September U.S. vehicle sales, and analysts expect among the weakest sales rates this year.

A plunge in consumer demand after the cash-for-clunkers program likely dragged the September sales rate back to the low levels seen in the first half of this year.

Automakers will tally vehicle sales at an annual rate of 9.3 million units in September, according to the average forecast of nine analysts surveyed by Automotive News.

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Toyota and Honda, Japan’s two largest automakers, led the second straight increase in the nation’s monthly auto sales as government incentives boosted demand.

Sales of cars, trucks and buses, excluding minicars, rose 3.5 percent to 321,737 in September from a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said in a statement today. Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, sold 139,775 units excluding Lexus-brand cars, up 9.4 percent.

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Toyota Motor Corp has raised its global sales forecast for the year to March 2010 by 3 percent to 6.7 million cars, the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported on Saturday, in the latest sign of a nascent recovery in auto demand.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is also raising its global production by 8 percent to 6.45 million vehicles for 2009/10, thanks to the impact of government subsidies and tax incentives on new fuel efficient cars, the paper said.

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Just three months out of bankruptcy, Chrysler Group is preparing for a likely return to consumer leasing, say auto dealer sources briefed on the plan by the company.

The leases, which will originate with GMAC Financial Services, will be offered only on select vehicles. Probable vehicles include the Dodge Journey crossover, Nitro SUV, Ram pickup and Grand Caravan minivan; Jeep Liberty SUV; and Chrysler Town & Country minivan.

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These days, online shopping is popular for digital products, women style things. But what about cars? or used cars? Now, the Autoquake.com, the UK’s largest online used car retailer, has discovered that nearly a third of its customers choose to have their car delivered. That means more than three out of ten (30.5%) buy the car unseen.

The proportion of buyers choosing delivery rather than collection from Autoquake.com’s handover centres in Leeds and Birmingham has steadily increased, suggesting buyers are becoming happier to spend thousands of pounds over the internet. Looking back over the past six months, in March just over a quarter of Autoquake.com customers opted for delivery. In August that had risen to over 35%.

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