Volkswagen US Sales Collapse Almost 11% in July

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:08AM EST · Published Jul 29, 8:35AM EDT

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Volkswagen US Sales Collapse Almost 11% in July — © courtesy of Volkswagen of America Inc.

Volkswagen is taking the expected beating in the United States due to its emissions scandal. Its sales for the month dropped 10.6% to 48,000 in July, according to Kelley Blue Book, compared to the same period of last year. The total U.S. car market dropped 0.5% to 1.5 million, the research firm forecast.

VW may never sell diesels again in the U.S. market, which will cause sales to drop more rapidly in the months ahead.

Among the “big three” manufacturers that sell cars in the United States — General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) — Ford was the only one to post growth. Its sales moved higher by 0.4% to 223,000. GM sales fell 3.9% to 262,000, and Toyota’s dropped 3.8% to 209,000.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU), which has had the validity of its sales figures questioned, posted growth of 2.2% to 182,000.

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Tim Fleming, analyst for Kelley Blue Book, confirmed an anxiety car manufacturers have had for some time:

The new-car market currently appears to be reaching its peak in terms of sales, and now there is a better chance that 2016 won’t be another record year, as year-over-year comparisons for the remainder of 2016 will be tough. After a record new-car sales total in the United States in 2015, Kelley Blue Book’s full-year forecast for 2016 now calls for sales in the range of 17.4 million to 17.8 million, which would range anywhere from a slight year-over-year decline to a 2 percent increase.

Sales have started to falter in one of the three largest markets in the world (the others are China and the European Union). The ability of car companies to post record margins in the quarters ahead has been challenged.

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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.