By the Numbers - December 2009: Strong Finish Edition

Industry finishes year strong with Ford up 33% and GM down 6%

It appears that all your Toyotathons, Nissan A-Z Year End Events and Ford Year-End Sales Events worked their magic in the month of December, as the final 31 days of 2009 saw positive sales for most brands and automakers in the U.S. The biggest story is perhaps the Ford brand, which saw its sales rise 37 percent in December to 159,169 units, just 126 units shy of beating Toyota and its 159,295 units sold. The Ford Fusion and Escape had particularly good months to end a great year, with monthly sales rising 86 and 75 percent respectively. In the battle of the big brands, Chevrolet came in last with sales falling 1.5 percent on 135,622 units sold.

As they have been for the entire year, Kia, Hyundai and Subaru ended the year on high notes with sales rising 44 and 41 percent respectively for the Korean brands and 33 percent for the Japanese brand.

In terms of multi-brand companies, every one had something to smile about except Chrysler and General Motors. The Pentastar people will be glad to put behind a month that saw their sales fall about four percent overall, with only Dodge managing an small rise in sales last month. General Motors, meanwhile, can't wait to get its four non-core brands off the books, as Saab, Hummer, Pontiac and Saturn managed to weigh down the company's sales performance to the tune of a six percent slide.

Stay tuned, as we'll be publishing our By The Numbers evaluation of 2009 as a whole later on today.

*Brands and companies are displayed in descending order according to their percentage change in volume sales. There were 28 selling days in December 2009 and 26 selling days in December 2008, so the change in monthly sales volume will be different than the change in the average daily sales rate (DSR) for each brand/company.