2010 Sales In Review

December 2010 proved to be a very good month for the auto industry with most brands posting significant increases in sales over last December. In fact, Mini and Mercedes-Benz posted best December sales in their company history. 2010 as a year on the whole also proved to be much better for the auto industry compared to the past few years. All brands save Toyota and Suzuki were able to improve their sales compared to 2009. Even the recently discontinued Mercury brand was able to improve by a percentage point to close out its existence. General Motor's premium divisions led all brands with Buick improving by 51.9% and Cadillac with 34.7% respectively. Hyundai and Ford bested all of the other mainstream competition with 24 and 21% improvements. The 21% sales improvement allowed Ford to outsell Chevrolet and Toyota for the year. Hyundai, Kia and Audi all had banner years selling more than every before. Take a look at the chart below to see how everyone did in 2010 compared to 2009.

December also marked the start of sales of the all electric Nissan Leaf and the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt. Electric mobility is of to a slow start with the Volt winning the first battle with 326 sales compared to only 19 Leafs for Nissan.