#August2011

The Japanese car industry is slowly but surely producing and exporting itself out of the huge hole caused by the March 11 tsunami. The Japanese domestic market remains where it was before the catastrophe: In the dumps. This is the bottom line of August production, export and domestic sales data released today by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Now that Chinese car sales are a hot topic on CNBC, and now that even Jalopnik reports Chinese car sales, here a short primer on how it’s done. You may want to write that down. It’s tricky.

The people who have the final word on Chinese automobile production and sales are not from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The final word has the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). Never use the data of the China Passenger Car Association, they just lead you astray. I also recommend to distrust Bloomberg, they are prone to making mistakes – although this time, they were right. If your Chinese is a bit rusty, use sources such as Shanghai Daily to double-check. No problem. Love to help. Now, for the numbers:

Our Chinese sales oracle has spoken, and it says that sales of cars in China are good. August sales numbers released by General Motors today indicate that China has left the doldrums behind and is revving up to its old double digit self. Sales of GM China and its Chinese joint ventures set an August sales record and rose 13.4 percent (compared to August 2010) to 205,885 units.

This is round two of TTAC’s “Grade The Analysts”. Last time, we graded only on how closely analysts hit the SAAR number ( table provided by Bloomberg.). If we would have done this this time, all would have received an A or better. The guesses were THAT close. The overall SAAR for August was 12.1 million, and none of the analysts did bet on less than 11.9 or better than 12.3. Instead of giving them all gold stars, we made it a bit more interesting.

Analyst GMFord Chrysler SAARHimanshu Patel (JPMorgan)NANA NA12.1Rod Lache (Deutsche Bank) NANA NA12.2Chris Ceraso (Credit Suisse)20%18%12%12.1Brian Johnson (Barclays)15%14%15%12.1Peter Nesvold (Jefferies)19%16%NA12.3Patrick Archambault (Goldman Sachs)11%14%10%12.0Itay Michaeli (Citigroup)NANA NA11.9Adam Jonas (Morgan Stanley)NANA NA11.9George Magliano (IHS Automotive) NANA NA12.2Jeff Schuster (J.D. Power)NANA NA11.9Jessica Caldwell (Edmunds.com)20%14%21%12.3Jesse Toprak (TrueCar.com)20%12%22%12.2Alan Baum (Baum & Associates) NANA NA12.2Seth Weber (RBC)15%14%13%12.1Average17%15%16%12.1

After a tepid July, analysts predict a likewise unenthused August when it comes to new car sales in the U.S. The consensus of Bloomberg’s panel of 14 analysts is a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 12.1 million.

Sales of regular automobiles in Japan were down 25.5 percent in August, compared to the same month in the previous year, data provided by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association shows. This sounds worse than it is: In August 2010, sales had jumped 46.7 percent, result of a last gasp of government subsidies which were coming to an end.