Ugly Motor Sales Continue (F, GM)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Ford_logo_2Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) just released its November auto sales, and it is pretty hard to get excited about the data.  The company sold 118,818 units in November, below the 119,000 Edmunds.com predicted.  That would represent a drop of 30.6% from November 2007.   This is still only about 63% of what Edmunds expects from General Motors (NYSE: GM) where it estimates sales of 188,000 units.

November marked the official introduction of the all-new F-150.F-Series sales totaled 37,911 including nearly 5,000 all-new 2009 modelF-150s.  The company plans to produce 430,000 vehicles in the first quarter of2009.  During the first quarter of 2008, the company produced 692,000vehicles.  The fourth quarter 2008 production plan is unchanged fromthe previously announced plan of 430,000 vehicles.

Edmunds.com predicts GM sales will be down28.2 percent compared to November 2007 and up 11.2 percent from October2008. GM’s market share is expected to be 22.1 percent of new vehiclesales in November, down slightly from 22.3 percent in November2007 and up from 20.3 percent in October 2008.

The good news is that this was not any worse than the estimates.  Thebad news is that calling this good news would be like rewarding yourkid for almost passing the math class being taken for the third time.

Jon C. Ogg
December 2, 2008

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618