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Cruze sales surge in August
LORDSTOWN
August sales of the Chevrolet Cruze, which is made here, are up 52.4 percent over those of August 2015, General Motors reported Thursday.
This August, 22,342 Cruzes were sold in the United States, compared with 14,661 last August.
“When a new product comes in, it sometimes gets a little bit of a surge, and that’s clearly what we’re seeing here, and we saw that with the Malibu,” said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for Autotrader.
“The big question is how long does that last, and it does not seem to last all that long,” she added.
Next-generation Cruzes began shipping to dealerships in March.
The August figures contrast with a 25.1 percent decline in Cruze sales in the first eight months of 2016, compared with the same period last year, GM reported.
Dan Flores, GM’s senior manager of news relations, said only 777 of the Cruzes sold in the United States last month were of the previous Cruze model, with the remainder being the newly introduced compact sedan model.
The Cruze is a major component of rental car fleets, so, if GM continues to minimize its presence in rental-car fleets, Cruze sales will be limited, Krebs said.
“They have been steadfast in their staying on their course of reducing fleet sales, which were particularly low this month, keeping their inventories in check and being disciplined in incentives. That’s a good formula for improving resale values and profit margins,” Krebs said of GM.
“It’s fundamentally linked to the strength of the product. It’s a great-looking car. It has a lot of leading-edge technology that certainly would be attractive to a lot of younger customers,” Flores said of the surge in Cruze sales last month.
The new Cruze has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay capability, which leverages smartphone technology, and it also has advanced collision-avoidance warning technology, he said.
The new Cruze, whose empty weight is 250 pounds less than the previous model, gets 42 miles per gallon on the highway, he said.
“The 2015 [Cruze] was near to ending its life cycle, so people were anxiously awaiting the new car, and now that it’s out there, the numbers speak for themselves. We’re back to the consistency we showed for the first-generation Cruze,” said Glenn Johnson, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represents about 3,000 Lordstown assembly workers.
“Obviously, the consumer demand is still very good for it, and we’re happy to be able to get the vehicles out to our customers,” he said.
“I couldn’t be prouder for the men and women who come to work every day and build the world-class Chevy Cruze,” he added.
To ensure an adequate supply of Cruzes in the United States and avoid losing customers here, GM is supplementing the Lordstown supply with Mexican-built Cruzes beginning this month, according to Robert Morales, president of UAW Local 1714, which represents about 1,400 Lordstown fabrication plant workers.
That supplementation is to continue until the Lordstown plant reaches full production capacity, but Johnson declined to specify how many cars an hour the Lordstown plant now produces and what peak capacity there would be.
A major competitor to the Cruze is the Honda Civic, whose August 2016 sales are up 2.4 percent over those of August 2015, with 32,807 sold this August and 32,031 last August. For the first eight months of 2016, Civic sales are up 15.4 percent over the same period last year, Honda reported.
Overall, industry sales dropped 4 percent to 1.5 million vehicles, according to Autodata Corp. Total sales through August are up less than 1 percent over last year.