August Car Sales Expected to Fall, Toyota in Trouble

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 26, 12:05PM EDT

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Car companies have enough to worry about in China that they should not have to be troubled in the United States. However, new car sales are expected to drop by 4% in August, compared to the same month a year ago. Most of the punishment will be in Toyota Motor Corp.’s (NYSE: TM) sales, which are forecast to drop 10.2%.

Kelley Blue Book experts anticipate that:

New-vehicle sales are expected to decline 4 percent year-over-year to a total of 1.52 million units in August 2015, resulting in an estimated 17.2 million seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) … Industry sales are expected to decline in comparison to this time last year because auto sales from Labor Day weekend in 2014 were included in last year’s August results. This year, the Labor Day weekend sales days will be included in the September 2015 results, so the shift in the timing of Labor Day this year impacts the year-over-year results.

The Labor Day excuse is a good one, but it does not hide the fact that U.S. cars sales increases have tapered off.

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) may be the only car company that can celebrate August sales, as it sells more of its flagship product:

One manufacturer that could buck this trend is Ford, with its F-150 growing both in sales and available inventory, following a slow launch earlier this year. Ford F-Series sales, the best-selling nameplate in the country, are down 1.3 percent through July.

Sales of the F-150 have been sluggish so far this year.

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While Toyota is the only manufacturer that faces a double-digit drop, many of its rivals will not do much better:

	Sales Volume ¹			Market Share ²
Manufacturer	Aug-15	Aug-14	YOY %	Aug-15	Aug-14	YOY %
General Motors (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC)	258,000	272,423	-5.3%	17.0%	17.2%	-0.2%
Ford (Ford, Lincoln)	222,000	221,373	0.3%	14.6%	14.0%	0.6%
Toyota (Lexus, Scion, Toyota)	221,000	246,100	-10.2%	14.5%	15.5%	-1.0%
Fiat Chrysler (Chrysler, Dodge, FIAT, Jeep, Ram)	192,000	198,379	-3.2%	12.6%	12.5%	0.1%
American Honda (Acura, Honda)	154,000	167,038	-7.8%	10.1%	10.6%	-0.4%
Nissan North America (Infiniti, Nissan)	128,000	134,388	-4.8%	8.4%	8.5%	-0.1%
Hyundai-Kia	124,000	124,670	-0.5%	8.2%	7.9%	0.3%
Volkswagen (Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche)	55,000	56,822	-3.2%	3.6%	3.6%	0.0%
Total ³	1,520,000	1,582,675	-4.0%	–	–	–

¹Historical data from OEM sales announcements

² Kelley Blue Book Automotive Insights

³ Includes brands not shown

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.