General Motors is on track to reclaim its crown as the best-selling car manufacturer in the United States but overall car sales across the industry are tipped to fall.
The car manufacturer has outsold Toyota by approximately 80,000 vehicles through the first nine months of the year and in the most recent quarter through September sold 555,580 vehicles, representing a 24 per cent increase from the same period last year.
For the first time since 1931, General Motors was not the best-selling automaker in the U.S. last year after Toyota outsold it by approximately 110,000 vehicles, in part because the Japanese automaker better managed supply shortages.
Read Also: Toyota CEO Broke Out In Dance When Carmaker Outsold GM In The U.S. Last Year
However, while GM is now leading Toyota in sales, many expect demand for new vehicles to cool in the coming months due to rising interest rates that have increased prices. This will come despite a recent trend of consumers willing to spend more money on new vehicles due in part to supply chain issues and a preference for personal transport, Reuters reports.
“We’re cautiously optimistic about moving forward,” Hyundai Motor North America chief executive Randy Parker said when asked about industry sales. “There’s a lot of negative consumer sentiment in the marketplace. So we’re obviously concerned about that.”
Wards Intelligence data expects 13.49 million new vehicles to have been sold in the U.S. this year, noting that 1.11 million were sold in September.
“Discounts may begin to materialize as economic conditions, rising interest rates and steady vehicle availability affect the imbalance of supply and demand over the coming quarters,” added TrueCar analyst Zack Krelle.
