European, Asian Marques Bite Off More of the U.S. Sales Pie

Independent European and Asian auto makers boosted their share of the U.S. market by 1.5 percentage points last year, to 29.4%.

That dropped domestics--a misnomer of sorts as their numbers included Saab (50%-owned by General Motors), Jaguar and Volvo Cars (owned by Ford) and Mercedes-Benz (the German half of transatlantic giant DaimlerChrysler)--to 70.6%, compared with 72.1% a year earlier.

With total sales of passenger cars and light trucks pegged at 16,998,723 units by Autodata Corp., the New Jersey-based keeper of U.S. vehicle sales records, the domestics and their affiliated overseas brands sold just under 12 million vehicles, up from 11.2 million in 1998.

GM, recovering from a strike-marred 1998, managed to stay dead-even for the year with a 29.3% share, but only on the strength of a massive discounting campaign in the last few weeks.

Perennial No. 2 Ford, which was pushing profit over market share last year, dropped 1.1 points to 24.6%, its loss coming largely on soft sales of Ford and Lincoln brand passenger cars.

DaimlerChrysler dropped four-tenths of a point to 16.6%. The entire dip came from the Chrysler side of the company, and most of that from the Plymouth brand, which is being discontinued after next year because of its ever-weakening performance.

The independent European brands boosted their collective share of the U.S. market by six-tenths of a point, to 3.4%, Autodata reported. The companies--including Volkswagen and its Audi luxury unit, BMW, Porsche and Land Rover--also saw their U.S. sales increases outpace those of the affiliated brands such as Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz. Together, the independent European auto makers accounted for 60% of all European-brand sales in the U.S. last year, up from 57.5% in 1998.

Asian auto makers, including Ford-controlled Mazda and Renault-controlled Nissan, increased total U.S. sales by nine-tenths of a point for a 25.8% share and a total of almost 4.4 million vehicles.

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Overall, car sales in the U.S. were down almost one point as the truck side of the business continued to grow.

Light trucks--pickups, minivans and sport-utility vehicles--”now account for roughly half of all new-vehicle sales in America,” said Nobuo Araki, president and chief executive of Nissan North America in Gardena. Light-truck sales, Autodata said, accounted for 48.7% of the market last year, up from 47.8%.

“Trucks rule,” agreed David Healy, an Arizona-based industry analyst with Burnham Securities. Unit sales of light trucks, he said, “now account for more than 50% of the market in revenue.”

Healy and other industry analysts and executives credit the continuing growth of the truck market to America’s love affair with the vehicles’ perceived safety and utility.

Another factor--given the fact that trucks gulp fuel with far more gusto than do most passenger cars--is the low price of gasoline relative to inflation.

That could change rapidly, of course, given volatility in global oil markets and the strong rebound in the last year of the price of crude, now hovering around nine-year highs and approaching $30 a barrel.

“I would expect this trend to continue,” Araki said of truck sales, “as long as gas prices remain low.”