Report: GM set 2007 sales records overseas

Detroit News wire services

General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner said the automaker will probably get 75 percent of car and truck sales from outside the U.S. within a decade, Bloomberg News reported today.

GM will push sales in the fastest-growing markets as demand in the U.S. stagnates, Wagoner said in a Jan. 4 Bloomberg Television interview. In the third quarter of last year, 58 percent of GM’s sales came from outside its home market. GM relied on the U.S. for most of its volume as recently as 2004.

Preliminary results indicate GM set 2007 sales records in Europe, Asia and other non-North American markets, Wagoner said, while U.S. volume fell for the eighth straight year. GM lost $38 billion through September. Profits overseas weren’t enough to overcome losses at home and a $39 billion third-quarter deficit due mostly to a writedown of the value of future tax benefits, Bloomberg reported.