U.S. Carmakers Get Good News

GM, Ford and Chrysler showed much faster sales growth rates in April than Toyota and most other Japanese brands, in a sign that supply disruptions as a result of Japan's March 11 earthquake are hitting Japanese manufacturers hardest.

Detroit automakers were also helped by the spike in gasoline prices to near $4 a gallon which fed consumer hunger for more fuel-efficient cars.

In March, for only the second time since 1998, Ford Motor Co outsold the larger General Motors Co. But in April GM sold 18 percent more vehicles than Ford. Ford came in No. 2 after it showed a U.S. 16 percent sales gain compared with GM's 26 percent rise.

For the overall industry, April U.S. sales were up 18 percent compared with a year earlier, according to consultant Autodata.

April sales were 13.17 million units on the seasonally adjusted annualized rate followed by the auto industry, up from 11.26 million units last April.

It was the third straight month that U.S. auto sales topped 13 million on an annualized basis -- which had not happened since mid-2008. Still, that is well off annual sales of nearly 17 million in the decade before the downturn of 2008 and 2009.