It's Time For The Auto Industry's Calendar To Look Like Yours

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

When is a Gregorian calendar not a calendar? When December 2015 ends on January 4, 2016.

AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson brought greater attention to the subject of the unnecessarily convoluted auto sales calendar when, in a conversation with Automotive News reporter Amy Wilson, Jackson said, “It’s ridiculous that I have to get on the air and explain the industry calendar to make sense of sales.”

AutoNation’s December sales, you’ll recall, weren’t as rosy as the figures suggested. Not only did the “calendar” produce two extra so-called “selling days” from 2016, but higher inventories and higher incentives led Jackson to tell CNBC, “I’m saying we’re in a new chapter here.”

Jackson also lamented that AutoNation’s own sales reporting, which began in 2010, has not spurred the industry to report sales with greater transparency. As a result, AutoNation’s monthly sales reporting will come to an end.

On the transparency note, and as someone who makes a living by publishing and reporting on North American auto sales figures, I am constantly urging automakers to deepen the level of detail in their sales reports. From Ford’s F-Series label, which takes into account wildly different F-150; F-250; and F-350 sales, to the combination of Genesis coupes and sedans at Hyundai USA, to the combination of Sprinter and Metris vans at Mercedes-Benz, many reporting methodologies leave something to be desired. Moreover, in terms of overall totals, the unwillingness of publicly traded companies to differentiate between fleet and retail — in detail, model-by-model, month after month — is striking.

(Granted, automakers may fear the likelihood of the following event if they did release a detailed fleet/retail report. Casual observers end up forgetting that there’s such a thing as a good fleet sale and such a thing as a bad retail sale. In throwing a bone to industry watchers who beg for fleet totals, industry watchers report faulty conclusions. Hypothetically speaking, “Toyota Is In Dire Straits, Having Sold 2 Percent Of Highlanders To Daily Rental Companies, Up From 1 Percent A Year Ago,” is a headline worth avoiding.)

Back on the calendar front, 2015’s record-setting industry-wide sales performance ended with a December in which sales jumped 9 percent. But there were 28 selling days in “December” 2015, a month which dragged on until January 4, 2016. Automakers sold 58,700 new vehicles per selling day in December 2015; up just 1.2 percent compared with the 58,000 new vehicles sold per day during the 26 selling days in December 2014.

In 2016, only four of 12 months will feature the same number of selling days as in the year before. Yes, there would be a modest measure of inconsistency in year-over-year comparisons if January was simply January each and every year. January 2013 and January 2017, for example, each have four Sundays, but January 2014 and January 2015 each had five.

But turning the U.S. auto sales calendar into, you know, the calendar, would provide an element of consistency currently missing from the schedule. Holiday weekends and weekends in general will invariably complicate the reporting schedule. If ever there was a time for the change to be made, the age in which we hail Ubers on smartphones, remotely turn on the heat in our homes with Nest, install wireless pacemakers with seven-year batteries, and allow Lane Keeping Assist to autonomously steer a Honda Civic must surely be an age in which technology exists that would turn the auto industry’s calendar into a Gregorian calendar.

MonthBeginningEndReporting DaySelling Days


2016Selling Days


2015January1/5/20162/1/20162/2/20162426February2/2/20162/29/20163/1/20162424March3/1/20163/31/20164/1/20162725April4/1/20165/2/20165/3/20162726May5/3/20165/31/20166/1/20162426June6/1/20166/30/20167/1/20162625July7/1/20168/1/20168/2/20162626August8/2/20168/31/20169/1/20162626September9/1/20169/30/201610/3/20162525October10/01/201610/31/201611/1/20162628November11/1/201611/30/201612/1/20162523December12/1/20161/3/20171/4/20172728————307308

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.

Timothy Cain
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  • DenverMike DenverMike on Feb 01, 2016

    Would be interesting to know, but even with a separate break-down of F-150 and Super Duty sales, you'd still have to add them together to compare to the others, since Chevy, GMC and Ram won't break-down the sales of 1500s, 2500s, 3500s. It's simple the way it's done, and most of the general pop care very little of the specifics of pickup sales.

    • See 3 previous
    • VoGo VoGo on Feb 01, 2016

      @DenverMike I never understood why Toyota included Matrix sales in with the Corolla. Probably so they could say they 'outsold' Civic all those years.

  • DevilsRotary86 DevilsRotary86 on Feb 01, 2016

    Or, maybe it's time for the world to adopt an equal-quarter/almost-equal-month calendar like the World calendar! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar

  • Varezhka Of all the countries to complain about WTO rules violation, especially that related to battery business…
  • Carson D At 1:24 AM, the voyage data recorder (VDR) stopped recording the vessel’s system data, but it was able to continue taping audio. At 1:26 AM, the VDR resumed recording vessel system data. Three minutes later, the Dali collided with the bridge. Nothing suspicious at all. Let's go get some booster shots!
  • Darren Mertz Where's the heater control? Where's the Radio control? Where the bloody speedometer?? In a menu I suppose. How safe is that??? Volvo....
  • Lorenzo Are they calling it a K4? That's a mountain in the Himalayas! Stick with names!
  • MaintenanceCosts It's going to have to go downmarket a bit not to step on the Land Cruiser's toes.
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