Ford, GM, Toyota: August Auto Summary

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 3, 9:24AM EDT

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However badly the big car companies bled sales this summer, it appears that August brought no hope for better days.

Bloomberg speculates that Toyota (TM) sold more cars that Ford (F). The news service writes that "Toyota post a 2 percent gain this month to displace Ford as the second-biggest automaker in U.S. sales so far this year, according to research firm Global Insight Inc. Ford’s sales fell 12 percent, the average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg."

As credit companies become concerned about lending quality, the low end of the car sales business could be hurt as few buyers can get easy loans. Bloomberg gives that view a little bit of color: "ubprime buyers accounted for 19 percent of U.S. new-vehicle purchases last year, including 22 percent of loans at the U.S.- based automakers, J.D. Power & Associates said in a study released in April."

And, double digit decreases in sales may be repeated for some of the domestic car companies:

The SAAR average is based on forecasts from seven analysts and a survey of 22 economists. The analysts’ estimates are based on daily rates for August’s 27 sales days.

Analyst              GM     Ford    Chrysler    SAARHimanshu Patel       -1%    -13%     -7%        15.9(JPMorgan)Rod Lache            -3%    -11%     -4%        16(Deutsche Bank)Chris Ceraso         -2%*   -11%*    -8%*       16*(Credit Suisse)Richard Kwas         -13%   -12%      1%        15.3(Wachovia)Peter Nesvold        -7%    -16%     -14%       15.7(Bear Stearns)Rebecca Lindland     -9.3   -9.4     -3%        15.8(Global Insight)Paul Ballew          N/A    N/A      N/A        16.2(GM sales analyst)Bloomberg Economists N/A    N/A      N/A        15.7(average estimate)Average:             -5.9%  -12%     -5.8%      15.8

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Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.