For decades, the rental-car market served as a security blanket for the Detroit 3. Weak sales month? Just dump some cars onto Enterprise or Avis lots to prop up the totals. But over the past few years, General Motors and Ford Motor Co. have become less reliant on that profit-eroding habit, according to a review of industrywide rental sales data by Automotive News. Picking up the slack has been a mix of Asian automakers -- most notably Hyundai-Kia, and to a lesser extent Nissan and Toyota. American Honda's fleet business is negligible.
The chaos of often-sporadic bulk sales to rental companies distinguishes the rental market from the more predictable and profitable commercial and government segments of the fleet business.
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