The top three US carmakers have continued to struggle to match their Asian rivals in terms of car sales. They are severely loosing grounds against their Asian competitors. The leading carmakers Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have suffered a major setback experiencing a drastic drop in car sales in the year 2006. Ford sales dropped 8 percent, GM fell 8.7 percent and Chrysler slips by 5 percent while Japanese car makers Toyota and Honda reported an annual rise of 12.9 percent and 3.5 percent respectively.
As a matter of fact rising petrol prices have proved to be immensely beneficial for the Asian carmakers as it helped boosting Asian firms in recent time as increasing numbers of customers now choose fuel efficient vehicles. On the other hand, US carmakers are struggling to cope up with continued declining graph for Sports Utility Vehicle and trucks.
In December sales at GM experienced a devastating fall dropping 13 percent on the month that included 19 percent fall in truck sales while car sales fell by 1.6 percent. In the mean time, Ford’s sales of cars had risen in December as the Americans switching over to smaller and fuel efficient cars. However, Ford managed to remain at the second position in terms of car sales ahead of Toyota. The current sluggishness in the housing sector and rising fuel prices are mainly responsible for the recent drops in sales of trucks.
Toyota has already overtaken Ford in the global market and is all set to snatch GM’s crown as the world’s leading carmaker in the year 2007. In order to sustain in the market and giving push to their profitability GM and Ford are expected to cut 30,000 and 38,000 jobs by the year 2008. GM also planning to shut its several factories and selling stakes of GMAC Finance unit.
In the meanwhile Toyota has announced that it plans to make six more factories around the globe by the end of this decade.
