Following up to the February auto sales report, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner said today that while sales have been weak in the first two months, they have not approached the extremes of that some are forecasting.
"I think it is fair to say that it has been a little better than some of the doomsday people are thinking," Wagoner told reporters at the Geneva auto show.
He said GM had not made any radical changes to its spending plans and was ready to react should the market weaken or fail to recover. The automaker expects sales to recover in the second half of the year, but has not been building "a whole bunch of inventory" in anticipation of a rebound, Wagoner said.
Chrysler President Jim Press, on the otherhand, said the expectation of a rebound later in 2008 was "wishful thinking."
"Probably the biggest issue is what is going to happen to credit availability," said Wagoner. "If that levels out, than things will probably come back and be OK, if it doesn't there will be downside risks."
For the fourth-quarter of last year, OEM-driven subscribers represented 68% of Sirius' net additions and 78% of XM's net subscriber additions.
[Reuters]
geneva is great this year so far. already looking forward to next year.