GM's April Sales Boost Raises Hope Of Gliding Past Recall Woes

In where it matters most, General Motors seems to be holding up well amid the safety-recall crisis. Its U.S. sales in April were up 7 percent over a year earlier, a relative performance that put GM no worse than in the middle of the pack of how car brands fared during the month.

And GM’s retail sales were up by 8 percent, an indication that the company and its brands haven’t lost the hearts and minds of American car buyers who have been expected to react with varying degrees of aversion as news keeps coming about the automaker’s epic mishandling of the recall of 1.6 million vehicles, sold last decade, because of accident risks from ignition switches.

Some analysts suggest that GM actually has been benefiting from extra showroom traffic brought by owners of the recalled cars who are trading them in for new cars rather than fixing them, and who now are being incentivized with the offer of employee pricing for new vehicles.

In any event, for the year to date through April, GM finally was able to elevate sales to a flat comparison with 2013, after a difficult first quarter of this year.

April sales by arch-rival Ford, by contrast, fell by 1 percent compared with a year earlier, and sales by the still-troubled Volkswagen brand in the U.S. eased by 8 percent.

Meanwhile, among the relative-sales leaders were Nissan, which posted an 18-percent increase over a year ago, and Chrysler, which notched a 14-percent gain over April 2013.

In assessing the increase, GM executives in a news release were careful to step around the subject of the recall. “Retail demand was steady in April, and truck sales and transaction prices were especially strong,” said Kurt McNeil, U.S. vice president of sales operations for GM. He also cited a strengthening economy and “our award-winning new products.”

And indeed, if GM didn’t have such a strong lineup of new and almost-new vehicles, publicity over the safety recall may have become a much bigger drag. As it was, sales of the new Cadillac CTS rose by 68 percent, for instance; sales of the surprising new Chevrolet Impala rose by 27 percent; Buick continued to surprise despite the lack of very recent new-product news, up 12 percent for the brand’s best April since 2006, and even sales of the new Chevrolet Silverado were up 9 percent after a rough first quarter.