Then There Were None

As the annual Paris Motor Show opens today, there's little for any of the car makers present to be happy about when it comes to sales in the United States.

U.S. car sales have been sliding for months, but September marked a significant new low: it's the first time since car business blog Autoblog.com began tracking monthly car sales in mid-2006 that not only every single car company, but every single brand, posted declines for the same period.

Hummer was the biggest loser, with a 54.8 percent drop in sales from a year ago, while Volvo sales declined 51.8 percent and Porsche's fell 44.8 percent.

What's more, even the narrowest losses were still significant - no brand managed better than a 5 percent decrease in sales between September 2007 and 2008.

Audi fared the best with just a 5.4 percent decline, followed by Mini losing 6.7 percent and Volkswagen sales falling 9.4 percent. The rest of the 33 brands posted double-digit declines in sales.

It's intuitive that General Motors' gas-guzzling Hummer line, while BMW's zippy Mini did relatively well, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to the relative performances of other brands.

Audi and Volvo would seem to share a lot of similarities, but were at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as sales are concerned; likewise, while Porsche serves as an example of how hard the luxury sector has been hit, Mercedes Benz had only a 16.8 percent loss.

Given sales trajectories over the past few years, it's also surprising to see that Asian automakers did not hold up appreciably better than their American counterparts over the past 12 months. Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, Honda, and Toyota all posted decreases in the 20-something to 30-something percent range. General Motors did the best of the bunch with a 15.8 percent decline. Despite all the press with its hybrid Prius model, Toyota lost 32.3 percent over the past 12 months.

by Liz Gunnison

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