Chrysler expects steady US sales growth to start in June, the one-year anniversary of the automaker's emergence from bankruptcy, its US sales chief said on March 31. For March, the company expects US sales to fall between 10 percent and 13 percent from a year earlier, when it offered steep discounts prior to its Chapter 11 filing, Fred Diaz told Reuters on the sidelines of the New York International Auto Show.
Chrysler sold 101,001 units in March 2009. The impact of those discounts offered last year will probably fade away by June, Diaz said, adding that it would be a "realistic expectation" for sales to turn positive that month.
"We've been to that school of hard knocks with rich incentives, and it's a very slippery slope," Diaz said. "That's something we will not relive again."
For 2010, US sales are on track to hit 1.1 million vehicles, in line with targets unveiled in November, Diaz said. That would represent a 9.2 percent share of 12 million units that Chrysler expects the overall industry to sell this year in the US market.
In February, Chrysler sold 84,449 vehicles, flat with a year earlier and marking the first time in 25 months that the company did not report a year-to-year monthly sales drop.
Hurt by a lack of new products, Chrysler US sales fell 36 percent in 2009, worse than the 21 percent decline in overall industry sales.
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