Chrysler beats Honda for No. 4 sales spot

Chrysler February sales, while still down sharply, were more than sufficient to beat Honda for the No. 4 rank among the major automakers. They also beat industry analyst estimates by a significant margin. Jesse Toprak of Edmunds.com had predicted a 53 percent shortfall while Brian Johnson of Barclays Capital called for a 55 percent plunge. Closest to the actual figure was Patrick Archambault of Goldman Sachs who was off by just one percent at 45 percent. Archambault was the most optimistic of the seers.

The top automaker in U.S. market share remained General Motors, whose 126,170 vehicles sold (18%) beat the bottom eleven companies combined – which includes Volkswagen, Mazda, BMW, Mercedes, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. A distance behind GM was Toyota, with a 16% share; they were the only other automaker to make six figures. Ford came in at #3 with a 14% share, Chrysler with a 12% share, Honda with a 10% share, and Nissan with 8%. Nipping at Nissan’s heels and breaking the “every new rank is 2% less market share” pattern was Hyundai, whose sales were around 1,600 vehicles less than the company formerly known as Datsun, one of the original Japanese imports. Hyundai and Nissan combined nearly matched Toyota’s sales.

Other automakers, led by Volkswagen with a 3% share, were a good distance behind, and sold at most 18,382 vehicles. Mitsubishi had a mere 4,484 sales, Isuzu limped along with just 350, and Maserati came in with a decent showing at 65 units.