Auto sales in the United States fell about 1% in January, a month affected by the temporary Government shutdown and bad cold weather, and stood at 1.14 million units.
The sales figures do not include the two main automobile manufacturers in the country, General Motors (GM) and Ford, which have decided to stop reporting their monthly sales in favor of quarterly reports.
The Fiat Chrysler Group (FCA) said its sales increased by 2.5% in January to stand at 136,082 units due to the strong increase in demand for the Ram brand, which specializes in the production of pickup trucks and vans.
FCA said that Ram sold 39,649 units, 23.8% more than a year ago. The rest of the group’s brands, including Jeep, experienced declines in sales.
For its part, the Toyota group sold 156,021 vehicles in January, 6.6% less than in 2018 while Honda gained 1.5% of demand with the delivery of 106,139 vehicles, and the Nissan group lost 18.5% , with 100,741 vehicles sold.
Hyundai increased its sales by 1.9%, to 42,020 vehicles, and Kia by 4.9%, to 37,376.
For its part, the Volkswagen brand (VW) lost 6.7% of its sales and ended the month with the delivery of 43,012 vehicles.
The sales pace of January places the annual forecast for 2019 below the 17 million unit mark.
Since 2014, the US market has sold over 17 million new vehicles every year.
