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Cars and Drivers

Car Sales Soared In February, Most Makers Up Double Digits

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The still-sputtering economy which continues to be undermined by high unemployment and low home prices has not arrested a tremendous revival of car sales. In 2008 and 2009, national sales barely averaged 10 million, down from over 16 million in both 2005 and 2006.

There are several theories about the car sales recovery. One is that Americans have held their new cars for a record number of months. This theory says that those aged models now need replacing. Another theory is that car low rates are low–sometimes 0%. This has been an enticement to bring buyers back into the market.

Whatever the reason, major car companies have started to report February sales.

Chrysler said its sales rose 40% compared to the same month last year to a total of 133,521 vehicles. Chrysler declared government assisted Chapter 11 in 2008. There was doubt about its survival because it was and is so much smaller than rivals GM (NYSE: GM) and Ford (NYSE: F). But, Chrysler’s controlling shareholder Fiat has done an impressive jobs of turning it around.

GM’s sales rose 1% to 209,306 vehicles. Despite the modest increase, it is still the market share leader in the US. Ford sales were up 14% to 179,119 vehicles.

VW, which has lagged in US sales despite being the second largest car company in the world said that 43% to 30,577 vehicles

Douglas A. McIntyre

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.

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