GM Records

General Motors Corp. makes more than 40% of all U. S. automobiles, has models in every price class. Its monthly sales figures, models of completeness, are a standard index of the U. S. motor trend. Last week GM reported that in March its dealers retailed 181,782 passenger cars and trucks, an all-time record for that month and the highest total for any month in GM history except May 1928.

Retail sales for the first quarter of 1936 also set a record for that period. Even more significant, GM's March sales were 89% above those in February. Some of this gain was probably the result of bad weather, which made prospective buyers put off their purchase until the first hint of spring. Yet the February-March gain in 1935 was only 63%, in 1934, 67%.

Most motor statistics for 1936 have been thrown out of focus with 1935 by the fact that the automotive year is almost six months gone, the season having started last November instead of in January. But the distortion in GM's sales tended toward understatement rather than overstatement, since GM prospects have already had two months more in which to buy their GM cars than they had last year at this time.

March production schedules for the industry as a whole were originally expected to result in total output for that month of around 400,000 units. Last week it was estimated that production was actually 450,000. Estimates for April have been hiked from 450,000 to 500,000. And U. S. motormakers continue to work on the theory that 1936 will be the industry's best year since that magic mark, 1929.

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