The Auto Writer

There is no other way to properly share this news besides coming out and saying that domestic auto sales for September 2008 were down sharply — across the board — by 26.6% compared to September 2007. If there is any consolation with this bit of awful news is that it was expected, yet there were a few surprises and twists of note.

Toyota certainly didn’t lose the most sales volume during the month, but with a drop of 32% over September 2007, its loss was far worse than General Motors who led the Big 6 automakers with the lowest drop, of just under 16%. Toyota car sales were down 28% and trucks/SUVs by 38%, reflecting
the absolute bottoming out of consumer confidence thanks to the seizing up of the financial industry.

The Big 6 Take A Pounding

Nissan posted the worst Big 6 sales decline, falling 36.5%, followed by Ford at 34.5%, Chrysler with 32.8%, Toyota, Honda at 24.0%, and then General Motors. The big difference for GM was its “employee pricing” offer which expired on September 30th. GM has now replaced that incentive with 72-month, 0% financing for October on all 2008 leftover models.

For Toyota, the shocker is that this loss represents their most significant drop in more than four decades, and that from a company who has been selling cars stateside for the past fifty years. When adjusted for one less selling day in 2008, the Yaris was Toyota’s sole model to register an increase, a minuscule 0.1% climb. Likely, some of Toyota’s losses were exacerbated by the lack of availability of its Prius’ hybrid, a car that the automaker simply cannot keep in stock due to a lack of parts (the battery, for example).

Kia Chooses To Avoid The Obvious

Not every automaker who published September sales information on Wednesday was forthcoming on just how bad the month was for them. Kia, which had been up year to date through August, registered a 27.8% loss in September, but that information was only made evident by MotorIntelligence (Autodata), the company who tallies domestic automotive sales. Instead, Kia published the headline — Passenger Cars Up 17.2 Percent Year to Date — and emphasized that both the Optima and Rio are seeing sharp sales increases for the year.

Audi and Mazda Report

Of course, when you’re served lemons the only thing you can do is make lemonade, something that Audi has done when issuing its own sales report. Stressing the introduction of its all-new A4, the German automaker sought to emphasize what it has available instead of what they haven’t been able to sell.

Mazda, after acknowledging that its sales were off 35.6%, went on to share that its sales in Mexico were up sharply, by 29% and is running ahead for the year by 33% south of the border. The company also said that its Canadian sales were down slightly, about 4.2%.

For the month, 964,873 new cars were sold, which was a rare drop below the one million new vehicle threshold. At an annualized rate that means 11.56 million vehicles will be sold, well off the peak of 17.8 new cars sold in 2000. Still, with three months left in the year, sales should top 14 million units provided that the credit crunch is ended, consumer confidence returns, and unemployment doesn’t rise sharply.

(Source: Autodata)