Honda, Nissan sales rev up, hit records

Automakers record their best Aprils, as GM, VW sputter

DETROIT — America’s love of trucks and SUVs helped push most automakers to healthy sales gains last month as Honda and Nissan reported record April sales. Ford posted record SUV sales, while Toyota broke a record for SUV and truck sales.

Honda led major automakers with a 14.4 percent sales increase as both its cars and SUVs sold well, while Nissan’s sales rose 12.8 percent. Fiat Chrysler was up 6 percent on record Jeep sales, and Ford rode an April record for SUV sales to a 4 percent increase. Toyota sales rose 3.8 percent largely because of the RAV4 small SUV, which broke a monthly record, with sales up nearly 32 percent.

Only General Motors and Volkswagen saw sales declines, with GM blaming a 3.5 percent drop on a strategy of cutting lowprofit sales to rental car companies. VW sales fell almost 10 percent as its emissions-cheating scandal continued. Sales have tumbled nearly 12 percent for the year.

Ford said it sold more than 65,000 SUVs, the best April in company history, led by the Explorer with a 22 percent increase. At Nissan, cars and SUVs pushed sales up, while Fiat Chrysler was led by a 17 percent increase in sales of Jeep SUVs. It was the best April since 2005 for FCA US, a unit of Fiat Chrysler.

Car-buying site Edmunds.com predicts April sales of more than 1.51 million, beating the previous record for the month set in 2005.

“I think it’s full-steam ahead,” said Rebecca Lindland, senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, who doesn’t see any economic forces that would cause car sales to slow.

Lindland says automakers aren’t creating demand with wild incentives or crazy lease deals like they have in the past.

KBB is forecasting sales to be flat from last year’s record 17.5 million, but Lindland says they could even fall a bit as GM and other automakers reduce sales to rental car companies. Still, she says retail sales to individual buyers would be up, and that is healthy for the auto industry.

Regardless of whether sales keep growing, the overall pace of growth is slowing. Two years ago, for example, April sales jumped 8 percent, or double last month’s expected pace. J.D. Power and Associates predicted that April sales this year would run at an annual rate of 17.6 million.

For now, the sales outlook is still mostly sunny. Consumers are on track to spend more than $36.9 billion on new vehicles in April, surpassing the previous record for the month set last year, according to J.D. Power and LMC Automotive.

But there are some worrying trends for the industry.

Buyers are flocking to SUVs and trucks, which might force manufacturers to offer big discounts on cars to move them off lots. That’s good for buyers in the short term, but incentives can flood the market with cars and hurt resale values.

Although car sales are dropping overall, Lindland doesn’t see big price wars developing because many auto factories can now switch easily from cars to SUVs. Many SUVs are built on the same underpinnings as cars.

ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP Nissan’s sales rose 12.8 percent last month on the strength of cars and SUVs, while Honda’s sales rose 14.4 percent, also with a strong showing from cars and SUVs.