July New Car Sales on Track for Best Since 2007

Auto industry research firm truecar.com released its sales and incentives forecast for July today, and the company expects the sales forecast to translate to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of new car sales of 14.1 million in the US during 2012. That’s equal to the June estimate, but down from an April high of 14.6 million units. The sales rate in July of last year was 12.2 million units.

Total July sales of cars and light trucks are expected to reach 1.17 million vehicles, 10.6% higher than in July 2011. The forecast is -8.8% lower than June 2012 unadjusted sales.

General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F), and Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) lead the market share forecast for July with 18.4%, 15.2%, and 13.6%, respectively. Chrysler gets 10.9% share, followed by Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMC) with a 9.9% share, Hyundai/Kia with a 9.5% share, and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. (OTC: NSANY.PK) with an 8.1% share. Volkswagen AG rounds out the top eight with a 1% share.

Industry-wide incentive spending has fallen by -3.7% month-over-month, and by -5.8% year-over-year. Only Honda showed a year-over-year incentive spending increase, and that a whopping 12.8% jump.

Truecar’s vice-president of market intelligence noted:

The pace of new vehicle sales remained steady in July despite the mixed economic news, helped by the compelling selection of vehicles and highly optimized incentive programs. The Japanese Big 3, as well as Chrysler, will all be posting double-digit gains while Ford and GM will essentially be flat. One look at the Toyota and Honda sales today will make you think as if nothing ever happened last year.

The truecar.com data is available here.

Paul Ausick