In fact America scrapped more cars than it sold last year. While the government's short-lived cash-for-clunkers scheme is acknowledged to have prevented a complete sales collapse, as in Europe, the real winners were makers of smaller, cheaper car such as the Korean firms of Hyundai and Kia and Subaru, with its range of small utilities. The big three American car makers, together with the grandee Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan, all lost sales.
After a two-month hangover from the effect of the scrappage tax (which we still have to "enjoy" in Europe), US car sales did pick up a little at the very end of last year. But with unemployment still running at about 10 per cent and credit still hard to come by, the car makers are being very cautious about a return to the high old days.
"I don't think we'll ever get back to 17 million annual sales," says Stefan Jakobi, president of Volkswagen America and the man charged with hauling VW back to viability in the US. "Those were artificial sales kept high with unsustainable incentives. I think about 15 million would be a natural figure for the US market."
And there's life in the industry yet, with new models from Ford (new Focus), VW (a concept coupé), Mercedes-Benz (E-class cabriolet), and even General Motors with the production version of the Volt, an extended range battery hybrid – it will be called Ampera in Europe.
The General, which was the world's largest car maker, went into US bankruptcy protection last year and was bailed out to the tune of about $50 billion by the US taxpayer. It closed its Saturn and Pontiac divisions, sold Hummer, is closing or selling Saab and almost sold Opel/Vauxhall. Last year it sold 30 per cent fewer cars and though it has started to pay off the government loan under new CEO Ed Whitacre, the company's former finance arm GMAC recently required another billion-dollar injection from the state.
Chrysler, the smallest and least competitive of America's car makers, had been bought by Daimler in 1998 for $36 billion, sold in 2007 to private equity group Cerberus for $7.4 billion, then put into bankruptcy and sold out of it to Fiat. Under its new CEO, Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler's products are being radically merged with Fiat's European model line-up, but the US arm is by no means out of the woods.
Last year Chrysler sold just 931,000 cars and trucks, 36 per cent lower than 2008 and its worst performance since the early 1960s.
Over at Ford, CEO Alan Mulally's $23 billion mortgage spree in 2006 was paying off and the company wasn't forced into Barack Obama's car-making bankruptcy sausage machine, merely requiring a $9 billion line of credit to tide it over. It has sold Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo to concentrate on blue oval cars.
The strategy is working so far. Ford had the least horrendous 2009 of all the "big three". Ford sales dropped 15 per cent overall last year, but picked up well at the end, with strong sales of its smaller cars. It arguably has the star of this year's Detroit show as well, with the debut of the new Focus, which goes on sale next year across the globe in basically the same form.
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