Toyota down 35%, GM down 49%
Led by a 55 percent nosedive in sales of its Highlander SUV, Toyota brand sales fell 34.9 percent in January. Tundra sales just barely edged over 7,000, a 43.6 percent plunge.
Lexus passenger car sales took a 37.7 percent hit while the resilient RX kept Lexus light truck sales losses to a relatively small 21.4 percent.
Sales of Toyota’s small cars, including the Yaris and Scion lines, were down 46.2 percent as cheap gas prices curbed consumer demand for compact transportation. Sales of the top-selling Camry were down 36.8 percent, coming in barely a thousand units ahead of the Corolla/Matrix compacts.
General Motors’ January sales declined 48.9 percent, led by a 57.9 percent crash in passenger car sales.
Once-hot small car sales dried up with cheap gas. Sales of the Aveo and Cobalt were down 70 percent and GM has stopped importing the re-badged Saturn Astra until existing inventories can be sold down. Not a single GM car broke the 10,000-unit mark.
Hummer sales were down 59.9 percent with per-model volumes measured only in the hundreds.
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