By Jennifer Keiper, WLS-AM 890 News
(CHICAGO) After 7-straight years of growth, the auto industry is seeing a slowdown. Ford, Nissan, GM and Toyota all saw sales declines, compared to a year ago.
Ford’s April U.S sales fell 7-percent because of declining car sales. Ford Vice President Mark LaNeve is trying to look on the bright side, “We’ve seen a plateauing industry, basically last year and this year and when you have that kind of an industry you’re gonna [sic] have variations move up and down month-to-month. In 2016, May declined 6%, August had a decline of 4%, and October declined 6%. Three relatively strong seasonal months that all had declines of the same range we’re seeing in April, yet, the industry still ended up at a record 17.85 million units.”
SUV demand couldn’t overcome slowing car sales at Nissan which saw a 1.5% sales drop and it was a similar story at GM, where sales were down almost 6%. Sales at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles fell 6.6%.
Honda reported a 7% drop compared to a year ago and Toyota and Volkswagen were also down.
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