While 2009 was a pretty tough year for the auto industry, it seemed to be especially difficult for the American auto industry. Two of the major Detroit automakers underwent bankruptcy restructuring and saw numerous management changes while losing sales and market share.
Well, it is now 2010 and the U.S. auto market is showing signs of strength and growth. Overall January sales were just shy of 700,00 vehicles (698,456 vehicles), up by nearly 7 percent compared with 654,757 vehicles in January 2009.
GM posted a 14 percent sales increase in January with a total of 146,316 units sold and FoMoCo stood out strong with an increase of 24.1 percent. Compared to their major Japanese rivals, Toyota sales were down 16 percent and Honda sales were down 5 percent. Of course there are a lot of factors that could have resulted in figures like this, the strongest being Toyota’s massive recall of 2.3 million vehicles – nonetheless, it seems like more consumers are warming up to the idea of buying American.
All the boring figures and numbers aside, do you think you’re more likely to buy an American vehicle now as compared to a year ago? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section. If you want to tell us which car you would buy – that would be cool too.
- By: Omar Rana
