• by Karl Greenberg , May 1, 2008

It's spring, when the snow melts, the flowers appear and drivers' hearts turn to ... new cars! Well, maybe not this year. While sales are likely to be up 3.7% from the dreadful March numbers, they are still--predicts Edmunds.com--going to be off 10% versus April last year. 

GM posted a $3.3 billion net loss in the first quarter, versus $42 million lost in the quarter last year. Ford posted a $45 million pre-tax loss in North America automotive operations versus last year's $613 million loss. The company, which has spun off its Land Rover, Jaguar, and Aston Martin brands, attributes the improvement to cost reductions of $1.2 billion. Chrysler, which was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management last August, won't report Q1 results until next quarter.

Big Three's U.S. sales are likely to have sunk last month as consumers swerved to avoid SUVs and trucks in favor of crossovers and cars. Edmunds.com, taking into account the number of selling days in April, sees Chrysler, Ford, GM and Toyota sales declining 23%, 14%, 16% and 6%, respectively. The firm sees Nissan and Honda up about 15%, and 1%.

For the first quarter this year, GM says it sold 2.25 million vehicles--down less than 1% from 2.27 million units in the first quarter of 2007. But that's global sales. The company posted a record of 64% of sales outside of the United States. Those sales were up 8% versus with the same quarter last year.

Edmunds' Jesse Toprak, who directs industry analysis for the firm, sees sales of compact SUVs and compact cars up 52% and 8%, respectively, versus April 2007. Large cars and mid-size SUVs will be down 19% and 17%, respectively.

But, says Toprak, sales of full-sized trucks and body-on-frame SUVs, paradoxically, won't be down as much because they've taken such a huge hit in recent months. "I think the biggest hit for those categories already occurred, so it will be more minor drops. Single digits for both," he predicts.

He says gas prices haven't hurt mid-sized sedan sales as much--they will sink less than 5%. "But demand is still stable because you have large families trading down to mid-sized cars under $25,000, and the category has seen so many new products like the new Chevy Malibu as well as Altima and Camry propelling demand."

The firm sees U.S. market share for Chrysler, Ford and General Motors at 49.8% this month--down from 54.2% in the month last year, but up from 49.5% last month.