Chevy cars outselling Chevy trucks for first time in 20 years

Between a rash of new bowtie-brand cars, a smaller parent company with fewer brands and higher gas prices, Chevrolet has hit its highest U.S. market share since 1991.

The mainstream division of General Motors says that its car lineup will account for just over 50 percent of its total volume for the first six months of 2011. New car sales figures for the first six months of the year are due out Friday.

“You’ll see continued strength in passenger cars, particularly in the compact and mid-car segments,” Chevrolet VP of sales and service Alan Batey told Reuters.

Much of the credit goes to the Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan, which is performing well ahead of its Cobalt predecessor. But the bowtie brand’s midsize Malibu remains a major player; it was the best-selling car in the United States last month.

Chevrolet’s cars aren’t necessarily nabbing market share from its trucks, however. While sales of the big Tahoe and Suburban SUVs are both down a bit (4.5 percent and 16 percent through the first five months of 2011, respectively), the second-best-selling vehicle in the U.S. remains the Silverado pickup (up 11 percent).

In part, Chevrolet sales are inevitably growing since GM eliminated most of the brand’s internal competition when it closed its Saturn and Pontiac brands after 2009.

References
1.’Chevy U.S. car…’ view

GM suggests that high fuel prices have had much to do with a general move toward more fuel efficient cars. The automaker says that about 46 percent of its retail buyers selected four-cylinder engines, a rate that is double what it was in 2006.

“We have been a very, very strong trucks brand and frankly have underperformed in cars,” Batey said. “It’s as simple as that. You have to go back a long way to see a car performance this strong.”

GM says that the last time cars outsold trucks was in 1991, when they accounted for about 52 percent of Chevrolet’s sales.

But Batey is conservative about the rest of the year. Trucks, he says, will probably account for 55 to 58 percent of sales for the entire year since, historically, the market tends to favor SUVs and pickups in the fall and winter.

Next year might be a different story, Batey acknowledges. The automaker isn’t planning to introduce any new trucks or SUVs over the next 12 months, but it has two high-profile car launches including the subcompact Chevrolet Sonic and the newly four-cylinder-only Chevrolet Malibu.