Automakers and analysts expected August auto sales to look bad compared to last August's figures, which were inflated by Cash for Clunkers. But last month was even worse than predicted.
The auto industry turned in its worst August for U.S. sales in 28 years.
While Cash for Clunkers skewed the year-over-year comparison, Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends for TrueCar.com, raised concerns that August U.S. auto sales totaled fewer than 1 million vehicles, down from slightly more than 1 million in July, when historically the two months tend to have comparable sales.
"What's actually more worrisome is we're supposed to be on a trajectory up to recovery," he said.
One exception to the dismal sales trend was Chrysler Group, which exceeded expectations with a rise of 7 percent to 99,611 compared to last August, the company said. It's the automaker's fifth straight month of year-over-year sales increases.
General Motors Corp., the biggest U.S. automaker, said sales fell 25 percent to 185,176 from 246,479 last August.
Ford saw sales fall 11 percent to 157,503 from 176,323 a year earlier for its three main brands.
Toyota reported U.S. sales of 148,388 units, down 31 percent from last year. Toyota had benefited tremendously from the government rebate program and reported one of the industry's biggest year-over-year declines.
For August compared with July, sales fell 3 percent at Honda, 7 percent each at Nissan and Subaru, and 8 percent at Kia. All of them reported bigger drops compared with August 2009 because of Clunkers sales. August sales at Hyundai were essentially flat.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment