#October2014

What was once the norm is now so rare that October 2014’s results are bizarrely backwards.

The 911 was Porsche’s best-selling model in the United States in October 2014. Stop the presses. Hold the cheese. Alert the medic. Release the proverbial hounds.

The 911 is by all accounts a sports car, even if it’s softer and plusher and more hushed and more PDK’d than ever before. Indeed, the 911 is not an SUV, the type of vehicle which normally dominates Porsche’s sales charts.

The Hyundai Sonata was America’s eighth-best-selling car in October 2014, down just one position but 4309 sales compared with October 2013. Among America’s top sellers, the Sonata was not alone in its decline, although the midsize Hyundai’s decrease was notable for its especially drastic nature.

Honda Civic sales slid 12%, the Civic’s fourth consecutive month with declining U.S. volume. Since the beginning of July, Civic sales in the United States have fallen 10%.

The Ford Focus was also off 2013’s October pace, falling 9% to 13,733 units, a 1375-unit decrease. Overall Ford brand car sales were down 11% in October and are down 4% this year even as the brand’s top-selling passenger car, the Fusion, has risen 6% (and 5% in October.)

In October 2014, for the first time since March 2012 and just the sixth time in the last five years, the Honda CR-V was American Honda’s best-selling model.

Finishing the month ahead of the Accord and Civic, given their longstanding status as two of America’s best-selling cars, is no easy feat. Only a handful of new vehicles typically do so every month, including the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, Toyota Camry, and Ram P/U. (The Civic also trails the Toyota Corolla and Nissan Altima this year.) Yet in October, the CR-V outsold the Accord by 2129 units and the Civic by 15,103.

Compared with 2011, when the CR-V managed this feat on three occasions, circumstances have changed dramatically. Or rather, the numbers have dramatically improved.

As Isaac Newton didn’t say, to go up, Volkswagen had to go down.

U.S. sales of Volkswagen brand vehicles declined 18% in October 2013, year-over-year, a 6182-unit decline in a market which expanded by 114,000 units, or 10%. Looking back, October 2013 was Volkswagen’s seventh consecutive month of decline, a streak which would continue all the way through the third quarter of 2014.

Yet this sharp decline last year enabled Volkswagen of America to announce, “increased traffic in our showrooms,” and an 8% increase in total volume for October 2014. Increases, yes, compared with a period of dramatic decrease.

In each of the last two years, America’s auto industry reported more new vehicle sales in October than in September. Sales increased 6% in October 2013, compared with the previous month. This year, October sales were 3% higher than September’s.

For Mazda, however, October is typically a low-volume month; their second-lowest-volume month in 2011; their lowest-volume month in 2012 and 2013. October 2014 sales were particularly poor, as Mazda USA sales fell to the lowest point since October 2012, crumbling 22% from September 2014’s total and 5% year-over-year.

Overall pickup truck sales jumped 10.1% in the United States in October 2014 as six full-size nameplates collectively grew 9.5%. Growth in the overall truck world was aided by 2158 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon sales (up from 34 a year ago), a 1326-unit improvement from the Nissan Frontier, and the Toyota Tacoma’s 5% increase.

We weren’t going to see rapid growth month after month after month. Indeed, monthly year-over-year improvements for the industry as a whole averaged 7.6% over the last four months. The U.S. auto industry was up 6% in October 2014 as a handful of automakers reported big gains, and a handful struggled to match last year’s pace.