Despite the ongoing cacophony of bad press and mounting recalls, General Motors (GM) has managed to report its best June sales numbers since 2007.
On Tuesday, the U.S. automaker said GM dealers delivered 267,461 vehicles in June, bringing its total sales for the month up 1% from 2007. There were two fewer selling days in June 2014, meaning the carmaker’s per-day sales were up 9%.
Sales of pickup trucks and SUV drove up the numbers, but GM’s struggling car division, the focus of the automaker’s recent spate of massive recalls, weighed on the results.
Fellow American automaker Chrysler also had its best June since the financial crisis, moving 171,086 vehicles off lots, pushing sales last month up 9% from 156,686 in June 2013.
Ford, meanwhile, saw sales decline 6%, moving 222,064 cars off lots. Retail sales, which do not include sales aimed at business buyers, were 145,989, a decline of 5% from last year.
June is generally a slower sales month for cars, and given the very strong May for the automakers, many expected June sales to be relatively soft.
On Monday, GM announced the recall of 8.2 million more vehicles, most of them for defective ignition switches. In the first six months of this year GM has recalled more than 29 million cars — the largest number of recalls ever in one year by a single automaker.
