GM, Ford Lead Charge in October

The automobile sector seems to be running in top gear as the industry leaders like General Motors, Ford and others ride on favourable market conditions to record substantial increase in sales.

Leading the charge is General Motors followed by Ford. Having a sluggish market response for quite some time, both of them are surely on the path of revival mainly backed by sales of trucks.

GM’s sales touched a figure of 297,401 vehicles, up 17%. The sales of the trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUV) rose 33.2% mainly due to a decline in fuel prices in the last four or five months. However, on the other hand the car sales dipped by 1.8%.

"That's one reason (lower fuel prises) our trucks, SUVs and crossovers are gaining share," said Mark LaNeve, General Motors vice-president of sales, service and marketing.

Ford kept its second position in U.S riding on strong performance. The sale of cars rose by about 8% backed by 22% increase in sales of cars and total output reached 214,806. However the increase in the sale of SUVs was minimal. The main force behind the impressive performance of Ford was “Taurus”. The passenger car accounted for almost one fourth of the total car sales. The car is quite popular with entire fleets being sold to rental companies etc.

“Without the Taurus, it's unlikely we'll be able to increase car sales. That's going to be difficult," Ford sales analyst George Pipas said. "But ... it's all about returning to profitability in North America."

Toyota also kept up to its reputation, with a healthy mix of fuel efficient and powerful vehicles the sales in the U.S touched 189,011. The market share also rose marginally, up from 15.1% to 15.5%.

Honda Motors though lost about 0.2% in sales and Daimler Chrysler’s AG unit also recorded a drop of 3.2%. This drop was however taken care by the record sales of Mercedes Benz vehicles.

"These results are about what you would expect because the year-ago numbers were so low," said Wes Brown, an auto analyst with market-research firm Iceology. "For Ford, the mid-size sedans do seem to be gaining some traction, but trucks for them and Chrysler are just dead."

All the results coming up might not look very impressive as these are being compared to last year sales and earnings. Everybody is aware of the situation last year when every auto maker was under the hammer of towering fuel prices, an incentive actuated selling in summer and the hurricane Katrina.