General Motors today announced its total U.S. sales increased 20.6% in March compared to the same month a year ago. However, GM’s four core brands — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC — were up a combined 43.3% compared to March 2009.
As the overall sales market increases, GM’s improvements have been largely driven by the Detroit automaker’s new vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Equinox and Buick LaCrosse. The Equinox was up 194% and the LaCrosse was up 236% in March.
GM is in the processing of eliminating four of its eight U.S. brands — Saab, Hummer, Pontiac and Saturn. Saab was sold while the other three are being shut down.
The Detroit automaker worked to highlight the increases of its four remaining brands by slowly releasing sales results of the four brands individually, beginning about an hour before announcing its total results.
According to the automaker: Sales increased 41% at Chevrolet, 42% at Cadillac, 76% at Buick and 45% at GMC.
In March, GM said the four eliminated brands’ sales dropped 88.4% to 3,140 from 27,012.
In all, GM said it delivered a total of 188,546 vehicles last month in the U.S.
By comparison, in March 2009, GM sold 155,334 vehicles in the U.S., according to Autodata Corp. That was a 44.7% decline from the same month in 2008. About 17% of those March 2009 sales included the four brands being eliminated.
For the first quarter, GM’s total U.S. sales are now up 15.6% compared to last year at the same time.
