GM and Chrysler Dive While Volkswagen Thrives

I am starting to get a little more concerned about the future of General Motors and Chrysler. With both automakers suffering significant sales declines in September off of strong sales in August via Cash for Clunkers, the immediate future looks bleak.

Here is a case in point.

While GM was off 45% and Chrysler 42%, Volkswagen of America posted a 1.7% September gain. Not only did VW show a gain, albeit small, but sales were spread over a number of different models. The Volkswagen CC, Volkswagen Jetta and Jetta SportWagen all showed strong sales during Clunker August and continued on the positive side through September. With the 2010 all new Volkswagen Golf (pictured above) now reaching showrooms the long term prospects look sweet for Volkswagen.

Now here is the frightening comparison between VW, Chrysler and GM. While Clunkers not only increased VW business substantially, the momentum continued into September. This can be attributed to Clunker buyers spreading the word about the positive attributes of their new ride as well as shoppers from August regretting they did not purchase during Clunkers and returning to showrooms to make a deal.

There was no positive residual push for GM and Chrysler. Not only did they get hit badly off of Clunkers, they did substantial worse then month over month sales for September from last year. I guess you can get people into showrooms when the deals are plentiful, but when you have no valued products to keep customers coming, your inventory collects dust. To add to Chrysler and GM’s woes, automaker incentives are falling off as the supply of new vehicles in dealer lots dwindle as a result of the Clunker frenzy.

Buyers can expect to pay more for vehicles in the next few months as automakers feel that demand will exceed supply. The average price for a Chrysler or GM product rose 7.2% in the second quarter.

Chevrolet’s savior, the Volt (above left), is now looking at Nissan already taking sales orders for its new Leaf (above right) electric vehicle to be released next spring and expects to have 20,000 of them, pre-sold by the time the model reaches U.S. showrooms in the third quarter.

Same old, same old I guess. How much did we spend to bail these two guys out?