Sales of the brands GM shed as part of its bankruptcy filing were off 94% from a year ago, although those brands now make up less than 1% of the company's U.S. sales.
GM got a strong lift from a spike in sales to fleet customers, particularly rental car companies. Fleet sales accounted for 37% of its sales in May, up from about 31% in April.
Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) reported a 23% rise in sales at the three brands it retains -- Ford, Lincoln and Mercury. The company is in the process of closing the sale of its Volvo brand to Chinese automaker Geely. It also got about 37% of its sales from fleet sales, but it said much of those sales were truck sales to commercial customers, rather than car sales to rental companies.
0:00/2:10GM dealer: One year laterSales at the Ford brand rose 28% compared to a year ago, but sales at the Mercury and Lincoln brand were off 10% and 11% respectively.
There have been reports in the last week that Ford was close to shutting down the Mercury brand. George Pipas, director of sales analysis for Ford, said there was no drop-off in Mercury sales tied to the timing of those reports, and he had no comment about the speculation.
Ford's sales were good enough for it to again raise its second-quarter production target by 2%, or 15,000 vehicles, from its previous estimate, putting it at 640,000 vehicles. It also gave its first look at third-quarter production, putting it at 570,000 vehicles, which would be 16% above year-ago levels.
GM's sales easily exceeded forecasts from sales trackers Edmunds.com and TrueCar.com, while Ford topped TrueCar's forecast and was roughly in line with Edmunds' estimate.
Toyota Motor (TM) reported only a 7% rise overall, short of forecasts for a 9% gain. Its 4% gain for the Toyota brand was bolstered by a 31% increase for the luxury Lexus brand.
Toyota has been hit by recall problems this year. Comparisons for Toyota are more difficult to the year-ago period since many buyers were shunning GM and Chrysler a year ago because of the bankruptcy at those automakers at that time.
Experts are expecting a gain in industrywide U.S. sales of 11% to 18% compared to a year ago. May auto sales are also expected to be better than the April seasonally adjusted sales pace.
Other automakers are due to report results later Wednesday.
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