| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
advertisement | ||
Wednesday May 2, 12:24 AMNissan U.S. sales down adj. 11 pct in AprilDETROIT, May 1 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. said on Tuesday its U.S. sales fell 11 percent in April, with consumers backing off purchases because of a weaker housing market and higher gas prices.The Japanese automaker sold 71,124 vehicles in the United States in April, down 11 percent from a year earlier. Sales of its Nissan brand fell 14 percent, while sales at its Infiniti division rose 12 percent. Sales of Nissan-branded cars were down 11 percent, while truck sales were down 17 percent from a year earlier, Nissan sales chief Brad Bradshaw said. Nissan reports monthly sales results after adjusting for the number of selling days in a month. "It appeared to us that consumers were just frozen," Bradshaw told Reuters. "It just seemed to us that these housing issues -- which had been for us a California-only issue -- along with higher gas prices seem to have frozen everybody." While Nissan and other major automakers have seen year-over-year declines in sales of less fuel-efficient trucks, the weakness in April sales spilled over to passenger cars, an area where the Japanese automaker has newer vehicles on the market. "That's what caused us to say that there were just no shoppers in this market," Bradshaw said. Bradshaw said he expected that Nissan's rivals could respond to the weaker industry-wide sales for April by raising sales incentives. |
|||
|
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
|