DETROIT — General Motors is raising prices as much as $1,500 on its cars and trucks to help recover increasing costs for metals and other commodities.
Prices will go up an average of about 1.5 percent on most 2008 models, the automaker said Tuesday. The increases take effect today on vehicles shipped to dealers. GM last boosted prices because of material costs in November 2006.
“While most cars and trucks in our portfolio will go up between $100 to $500,” some vehicles “in hotly contested segments,” such as the Saturn Aura and the redesigned Chevrolet Malibu sedan, will stay the same, Mark LaNeve, GM’s North American sales and marketing chief, said in the statement.
Rising material costs may hurt chief executive Rick Wagoner’s plan to lure buyers back from rivals such as Toyota. Wagoner is in danger of losing GM’s global auto-sales crown to Toyota for the first time in 76 years as the Japanese automaker gains sales in the U.S. and elsewhere.
GM’s U.S. sales fell 6.1 percent this year through November.
Bloomberg News
