Auto sales take off again
Since Cash for Clunkers brought a lot of buyers a year ago, the auto industry reported this to be the best month, although buyers are still reluctant to buying new cars.
A report provide by the sales tracker Autodata shows a total of 1.05 million cars sold this month, 5 percent higher than the number of cars sold last year in the same month. This means July represented the second best sales month since the crisis started back in 2008, after August 2009, when the high sales resulted from the Cash for Clunkers program. The final calculation for the whole year, regarding the sales until now is about 12 million vehicles, compared to the 11 million vehicles rate calculated during the first half of the year. Much of the improvement came form the lower prices offered by the fleet sales of the various businesses like rental car companies. George Pipas, Ford’s director of sales analysis, says that the actual demand rose only by 1 percent this month compared to the fleet sales which increased by 35 percent. Many analysts hoped that the numbers will be much higher given the strong start of the month and the attractive pricing offered by most of the automakers.
Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst for automotive Web site Edmunds.com, says that people are still being cautious when buying a new car and do not want to spend a lot of money on it, and hope that although the deals are very good now they will grow better. George Pipas believes that it is a major achievement the sales are holding steady regarding the fact that last year Cash for Clunkers gave buyers up to 4,500 dollars in cash, government money for trading an older car for a new one. General Motors reported an increase of 5 percent in the sales compared to last year, when it emerged from bankruptcy, and the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac sales increased by 25 percent. But there are other cars that dropped heavily, like Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab, which meant a hold back on the total sales. Ford Motor sales rose by 5 percent, too, with a 27 percent boom in light trucks area (mostly pickups), that was balanced by sales dropping in cars and utility models. Pipas said that the sales were profitable, including low-priced sales to rental companies and high sales of the new Ford Super Duty pickup truck. Toyota Motor sales, on the other hand, declined by 3 percent from a year ago, placing it on the third position after Ford and GM. Toyota has been held back by the recent car recalls, and it seems that there are going to be more since only last week 400,000 vehicles were recalled due to steering issues. Honda Motor dropped by 2 percent and Hyundai Motor rose by 19 percent, as Chrysler Group also rose by 5 percent from a year ago.
