Former GM Director Projects Flat US Auto Sales in 2010

3 November 2009

Reuters. Jerry York, former GM director, projected that US auto sales are likely to remain flat in 2010. York told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit that “I just can’t fathom anything that’s going to cause a material increase in auto sales in this country in 2010 compared to 2009.”

“The economy ... quite frankly, I think it’s frightening,” York said. “You have a situation in which 10 percent of the people are unemployed ... The 90 percent that are employed, many of them are scared to death that they aren’t going to be employed by next week or next month or something and so the consumers are basically hunkering down. And it is frankly difficult to look around the landscape of the different sectors of the economy and say which one of these is going to bring us out of the recession.”

...“People are thinking ... we can rely a lot on what has happened historically,” said York, who two years ago correctly predicted the present slump in auto sales. “I don’t believe that. I think it’s a whole new ballgame.”

York said that he thought GM is likely to lose a percentage point or two of market share from its shift to just four brands; that Ford Motor Co’s debt load is very manageable; but warned that he believes Italian automaker Fiat SpA has a less than 50% chance of turning around Chrysler.