A Positive Trend in July Car Sales

Here is the meat of the car sales numbers: The seasonally adjusted annualized rate of sales stood at 11 million for the month of July, up significantly from the sub 10 million mark in June.

The major manufacturers that have reported so far show the following year-over-year results:

• Ford (F): +2.4%
• GM (GMGMQ.PK): -19.4%
• Honda (HMC): -17.3%
• Toyota (TM): -11.4%
• Chrysler: -9.4%
• Hyundai: +11.9%

“Cash for clunkers” is given most of the credit for the better numbers with the usual caveat that it merely accelerated sales from later in the year. I think there’s a lot of truth to that, but I also think that some of the growth in sales is probably real. The fleet is getting old and turnover is going to occur with or without C4C.

Still at an 11 million annual run rate, the industry is far from healthy.

More here.

Comments

[Ohrama:]

The C4C amounts for 250,000 of those sales (which appeared to have happened in the first week of its introduction - that is in July) or 3 million at annualized rate. Assuming 1M of this is due to the temptation of the incentive, we are still looking at 10 M annual sales or less.

Aug 05 06:44 AM