The numbers are (mostly) in, and the news isn’t good. August sales were down over 5% from July’s, and none of the major automakers were even close to the amount of vehicles they moved in July. Toyota took the biggest hit percentage-wise, followed by Ford and GM. Honda was only down about 4,000 vehicles overall, and almost everyone else stayed flat. The only companies to have better sales month-to-month were Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz.Less than 1 million vehicles were sold in August, which I can attribute to a lot of people taking vacations and getting ready to send their kids back to school. Also, September and October are traditionally when a lot of the new model year cars roll out, so I’d expect a sales slump beforehand. With that said, however, plenty of automakers are running Labor Day sales, and pre-model year rollout sales, so perhaps September will pick up the slack before the remaining 2011 model-year cars are released to the public?
It’s all a guessing game, of course, but even in light of August’s dismal outcome, I’m going to revise my current estimation of 10.5 to 11.5-million vehicles to 11.5 to 12 million vehicles sold during 2010. I think a strong push with incentives and redesigned cars is going to drive sales higher as we go into the fall, and even if numbers drop off for the end of the year, my numbers might still be conservative.
A footnote for you; After having spoken to a few local DC-area dealerships, the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro isn’t selling well, but its crosstown rival, the Ford Mustang, is selling like hotcakes, in both V6 and GT trim levels. It’s a shame that sales of Ford’s iconic Mustang muscle car let the automaker’s total sales drop around 13,000 from July to August, even though both Mercury and Lincoln posted higher numbers than the previous month.
The sale of Volvo from Ford to Geely was completed in July, so August is the first month that Ford can’t claim their sales, which can partially explain the drop for Ford.
Note: As of 9/2/2010, Volvo hasn’t released their sales figures for August. Charts will be updated whenever they do give us the data.
by John Suit