October 2012: Brewing Storm Edition

Hurricane Sandy's Effect Will Be Delayed

All that's left of Hurricane Sandy, which slammed into the Eastern US this week, is some rain showers and gusts of wind, but the effect of this storm-of-the-century will be felt by those in its path for months to come. Likewise, Sandy made landfall at the tail end of October, which means its effect on new vehicle sales for the month was minimal. However, despite the fact you can't see Sandy's influence in the numbers below, we suspect that next month those Atlantic winds will be impossible to ignore.

Nevertheless, Sandy didn't do too much to shuffle the order of automakers at the top of our sales list. Of the major brands, Subaru, Volkswagen and Dodge were all up over 20 percent compared to October of last year, whereas Toyota Motor Company and Chrysler Group led the way for major automakers with increases of 15.81 and 10.19 percent, respectively. General Motors posted a respectable increase of 4.75 percent, while Ford barely managed to remain positive with sales growth of just 0.39 percent.

Indeed, sales of Ford vehicles were about even, but the Lincoln brand fell 15.4 percent, its whole lineup having been outsold for the month by the Chevrolet Sonic alone.

Also down was Nissan North America, some 3.23 percent. This despite a positive performance by Infiniti (up 27.62 percent) and the newly redesigned Altima selling well.

*Brands and companies are displayed in descending order according to their percentage change in volume sales. There were 26 selling days in October 2012 versus 26 selling days in October 2011, so there is no difference between the change in monthly sales volume and the change in average daily sales rate (DSR) for each brand/company. Also, brands are combined and reported as companies only if their sales figures are released jointly.

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October 2013: Shut What Down? Edition

 

There was little doubt that the government shutdown, which occupied 16 days of an already-short month, put downward pressure on US auto sales during the month of September. If you weren't one of the 800,000 federal employees who were furloughed without pay during the crisis, you may have been one of many people who decided to put off large purchases like a car or truck until the US government got its act together and turned the lights back on. It seems those people and then some came back in October with an eye toward buying a vehicle, though, as a majority of brands are reporting increased sales for last month, especially those in the business of selling trucks, SUVs and crossovers.

US automakers in particular made the biggest gains, with General Motors sales rising nearly 16 percent, Ford Motor Company up 14 percent and Chrysler Group up 11 percent. Not only that, every single individual American brand reported increased sales (not counting Fiat). Surprisingly, Lincoln led the way among American brands with an increase of 38 percent on 7,131 units sold. Chevrolet, however, was the leader among volume brands, with a year-over-year increase of 14.7 percent compared to Ford's 13.2 percent. Among import brands, Subaru continued its aggressive growth trend with October sales up 32 percent over last year on 34,483 units sold, and Mercedes-Benz reported a large gain of 25 percent on sales of 32,107 units.

Among the few brands to report lower sales in October were Kia and Volkswagen. The Korean brand, which we're not used to seeing in the red, reported sales down over 6 percent, while VW posted a much deeper 18-percent drop in sales.

Check all of last month's sales figures in the chart below.

*Brands and companies are displayed in descending order according to their percentage change in volume sales. There were 27 selling days in September 2013 and 26 selling days in October 2012, so there is a difference between the change in monthly sales volume and the change in average daily sales rate (DSR) for each brand/company. Also, brands are combined and reported as companies only if their sales figures are released jointly.

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