Auto Sales Up 4 Percent, On Track For A Record Year
By Jeff Gilbert
WWJ 950
Car and truck sales bounced back in June after a fairly weak performance in May. Sales for the month are trending up about four percent over last year. That ends the first half of the year on a strong note.
"The first half has been the best first half ever," says AutoTrader analyst Michelle Krebs. "That puts the year on track for possibly another record year."
FiatChrysler lead the domestics with a 7 percent sales increase, pushed on by Jeep's best June performance ever. Jeep sales were up 17 percent over last year.
"Strong Jeep and Ram Truck brand sales fueled our best June sales in 11 years," said Reid Bigland, Senior Vice President - Sales, FCA - North America. "In spite of some severe stock market volatility in June, the American consumer stayed focus on buying new vehicles and propelled FCA to six vehicle sales records last month."
Trucks also helped Ford push its sales up six percent.
"Strong customer demand has helped us continue growing our truck leadership position, further widening the gap with our nearest competitor versus last year," said Mark LaNeve, Ford vice president, U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service. "Consumer demand for Ford SUVs also continues to surge to all-time highs, allowing us to introduce new levels of capability, versatility and technology to a whole new generation of SUV fans."
General Motors is in the midst of an active effort to de-emphasize sales to rental fleets, which tend to be less profitable than sales at dealerships, what the industry calls retail sales. So General Motors sales were down two percent overall...but up one percent at retail.
"Our retail-focused strategy is resulting in the highest share gains in the industry. Chevrolet is the fastest growing full-line brand and we expect that trend to continue as the availability of newly launched products improves in the second half of the year," said Kurt McNeil, U.S. vice president of sales operations. "Our reduction in daily rental deliveries, disciplined incentive spending and well-managed inventories are showing real benefit in the residual values of our latest launched vehicles."
Volkswagen, hurt by the emission cheating scandal, reported its sales down 22 per cent. Nissan had a great month with sales up 13 percent.
Analysts say they don't expect economic uncertainty to derail the industry's efforts to post stronger sales in the second half. Autotrader's Michelle Krebs says the momentum could keep going after that.
"The next couple of years, we still see as being very strong years, unless something we can't predict happens."
