Saturn, the youngest of the General Motors entries, averaged 776 deliveries per dealer in 1991, the first U.S. make to lead in per-dealer sales in 15 years, Automotive News reports.
Saturn beat Honda by more than 100 units, the trade publication said.Honda won the car championship in 1989 and 1990. The last time a domestic car finished on top was 1976 when Chevrolet edged Toyota by three sales per store.
The averages do not indicate actual sales. For example, Saturn averaged three times as many car sales per outlet as Chevrolet last year, but Chevrolet sold nearly 16 times as many cars as Saturn.
In combined car and light-truck sales per dealer, Toyota was the leader for the third year in a row but Saturn made it close even though its retailers don't sell trucks.
Toyota dealers averaged 789 car-truck sales to Saturn's car-only count of 776. Saturn went on sale Oct. 25, 1990, and averaged 43 deliveries per outlet that year.
Aside from Saturn's victory in the car column, the Big Three don't have much to cheer about in 1991 sales averages. Buick, up four units, was the only other domestic car to post an increase.
The results weren't any brighter on the import side. Among the major players, only Acura, Infiniti, Isuzu and Saab improved their sales per dealer.
Automotive News said sales per dealer is a way to keep score in an industry that lives by the numbers. They measure the relative value of a franchise by showing the relationship between the number of new-vehicle sales and the number of dealers selling those vehicles.
As in recent years, Japanese makes dominated the top 10 in 1991. On the car side, Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, Nissan and Mitsubishi snared second through eighth places in the Automotive News compilation. South Korea's Hyundai was ninth, and Chevrolet and Japan's Mazda tied for 10th.
Japanese makes won seven of the top 10 spots in the combined car-truck standings. Saturn was second, Ford was fifth and Chevrolet was eighth. The other places went to Toyota, Honda, Lexus, Nissan, Acura, Mazda and Mitsubishi. Honda, Lexus and Acura, along with Saturn, made the car-truck honor roll on the basis of their car sales per dealer.
Trucks gave Toyota the highest average of any make sold here. Toyota was third in cars, far behind Saturn and Honda. But adding trucks, which Saturn and Honda don't sell, put Toyota in first place in the Automotive News rankings.
Ford was 12th in car sales per dealer, but it was fifth in combined car-truck deliveries. Dodge moved up even more; it was 23rd in cars and 12th in cars and trucks.