CAR sales in Guernsey were up last year compared with 2007, according to Guernsey Motor Trades Association chairman Mike Wager (pictured).

He said the number of new and used cars exchanging hands had gone up only slightly but it showed that Guernsey was a different proposition to many other parts of the world, which at the moment are seeing steep declines in sales.

So much so that in the USA at the moment that the government came up with rescue packages totalling approximately $17.4bn in an effort to stop Chrysler and General Motors going broke.

Mr Wager said it was difficult to say whether it was right to save the companies with cash injections but that in the case of General Motors particularly, it was likely to happen for political reasons.

‘General Motors was in a position where it was going to run out of money by the end of 2008.

‘Their costs are something like $7bn a month and there was no more cash. The argument from General Motors was that they are the biggest employer in the US and if they ran out of cash and had to let everyone go, it would cost the taxpayer a lot more through unemployment benefits and everything that goes with redundancy than to give them this rescue package.’

The cost to the taxpayer if General Motors went bust would reportedly be as much as $150bn.