Foreign Automakers Increase Sales By 7,855 In July In USA, US Automakers Don’t Report Sales

I may need to cancel my fun, popular, and extremely time consuming monthly reports for US auto sales. One by one, US automakers have stopped publishing monthly sales data. At this point, there are almost as many brands not reporting sales as there are reporting them.

Tesla has never published monthly sales data, and even its quarterly reports don’t break out sales by country. Ford Motor Company and GM stopped publishing monthly sales data last year, switching to quarterly reports. And this was the first month in which Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) ceased its monthly sales reports, not giving any insight into what happened with its various brands in July.

Brands covered by Ford Motor Company, GM, and FCA include: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, Lincoln, Jeep, Ram, and Alfa Romeo. That’s right — we no longer have monthly sales data for any of those automobile brands.

If you’ve been following my automaker sales reports, you know that the US auto industry hasn’t been doing too well compared to last year. (See here, here, here, and here.) On the flip side, collecting and analyzing July sales data from the automakers that are reporting monthly sales (all foreign automakers) showed a more positive trend (for auto sales, not for pollution levels). The surprise was that sales were up compared to July 2018. They were up by 7,855 in total. However, they were down 76,670 for the year through July. Leaving in yellow gaps for the brands not reporting on a monthly basis, here’s how things broke out in July:

At this point, covering just about half of the industry doesn’t seem sensible, so I will probably switch to quarterly reports. If there’s enough demand for these partial (foreign automaker) reports, however, maybe I’ll reconsider.

In the meantime, any more thoughts about the sales data above?