Car Sales Crash, But It’s Complicated

Automakers sold 1.144 million cars and light trucks in January, down 1.8% from a year ago. But the “seasonally adjusted annual rate” (SAAR), the standard measure for monthly new vehicle sales, came in at 17.6 million units, right up there with 2016 annual sales of 17.55 million units, which had been a record, though all US automakers, and some of the largest foreign brands booked declining vehicle sales in 2016.

These sales are cars and light trucks that dealers delivered to their retail and commercial customers and that automakers delivered to large fleet customers, measured in vehicles, not dollars. It’s raw and unvarnished data, warts and all.

And there were some big warts. Compared to January last year, car sales collapsed for all three US automakers, and the largest Japanese automakers didn’t do much better:

GM -21.1%
Ford -17.5%
Fiat Chrysler -35.8%
Toyota -19.9%
Honda -10.7%
Nissan -9.0%

For all automakers combined, car sales sagged 12.2% from a year ago. Light trucks sales, which account for 63% of total sales, rose 5.7% but weren’t quite able to fill the hole in car sales.

The media was busy explaining that this car sales debacle came about because US automakers had somehow “cut back” on fleet sales to focus on profitability.

Alas, at GM, overall vehicle sales fell 4% in January, compared to a year ago. Retail sales fell even more: 5%. Car sales plunged 21%. But total fleet sales rose 1%!




[link to wolfstreet.com]