#usa

As the following table will demonstrate, June sales rose a tepid 14 percent over an extremely low June in the year before. 860,004 light vehicles had changed hands in June 2009, a drop of 27.7 percent from June 2008. This June, 983,821vehicles left dealer lots, nowhere near the 1,189,518 units that were sold in June 2008.

It’s that time of the month again. Today, sales in the U.S. will be reported. “Yucky” will probably be their nicest adjective. “U.S. auto sales this month probably posted the smallest increase since February as consumers concerned about unemployment and the economy avoid large purchases, analysts said” to Bloomberg.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg think June SAAR will be anywhere between 10.4 and 11m, the averaged number comes out to an annualized rate of 11.2 million units. More than last year’s horrendous June number of 9.7m, but less than 11.6 million in May. There will be little reason to celebrate.

Toyota is getting out of the carmageddon-caused and recall-related funk and is moving forward with worldwide expansion plans. According to The Nikkei [sub], Toyota has resurrected all key projects planned before the financial crisis.

Brazil beats America! Over at well-known Brazilian communications giant Globo, they are reporting that little ole Brazil has overcome big ole USA in car production and has taken 5th place worldwide. Can this be true? It depends on how you look at the numbers…

Complete numbers for U.S. January 2010 light vehicle sales are pretty much in (subject to change.) They look mildly promising. Overall, Automotive News [sub] records a gain of 6 percent over January 2009 so far. Here are the sales reported:

Volkswagen has grand plans for the U.S.A. Volkswagen wants to “increase sales and market share in 2010.” Ok, who doesn’t. Now, for the delusions of grandeur part: By 2018, Volkswagen wants to more than triple annual car sales in the U.S. to 1 million a year, with Audi accounting for 200,000 sales, reports the Wall Street Journal. Seen any flying pigs lately?

Why 2018? By 2018, Volkswagen wants to rule the world, and trounce Toyota in unit sales, profitability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and most likely size and quantity of cup-holders also.

Everybody in the company has to do his or her share for the grand plan.

Come 2010, U.S. customers will storm the few remaining dealerships. GM will go public with a healthy pop that makes the taxpayer rich. The good old times will be back. The Japanese don’t think so.

Toyota had slammed hard on the brake when it came to capital expenditures. So hard that ToMoCo (and Sony) were rapped on the knuckles by the Japanese Ministry of Finance for hobbling Japan’s economy. Suddenly, Toyota starts pouring concrete and installing machinery again. Not because of newfound faith in the auto market in general. Two factors made them do it: The Yen has become so expensive that manufacturing in the USA is cheaper. And China is gobbling up cars faster than Toyota can make them.

According to the Nikkei [sub], a Toyota plant in the US and one in China will increase ToMoCo’s annual output capacity by 200,000 units before the Japanese 2010 fiscal ends on March 31, 2001. The construction will cost Toyota a little over $1b, depending on the vagaries of the greenback and its pegged follower, the Chinese Yuan. Here are the blueprints:

In January, China’s auto sales for the first time in history exceeded America’s, making China the world’s largest auto market for the month. As we said, sooner than later, China is bound to outclass the US of A solidly. Xu Changming, director of China’s economic consultative center under the State Information Center, thinks that it is quite possible that China will overtake the United States as the World No.1 car market for all of 2009: “Chinese auto sales are expected to grow 4 percent to 5 percent from 9.38 million units sold last year, more than the estimated 9 million unit sales in the U.S. this year.”

“But this figure is not something we should feel proud of since the U.S. was just plunged into an economic recession,” Xu warns according to Gasgoo. “Once the recession ends, America can retake the sales crown by selling 16 million–17 million vehicles annually.” So even if China takes the crown this year, they might lose it, and then “China still needs at least four to five years to eventually catch up with the U.S. in the auto sales total,” said Xu. And he has reason for caution . . .

Never has the term “Red China” been more appropriate than in the last month. The U.S. is staring into China’s taillights. In January, the unthinkable happened. China dethroned the United States as the world’s largest car market. Not for the year. For one month only—so far. Even the biggest optimists (or pessimists, depending how you look at it) didn’t expect (fear) that China would outsell the U.S. before 2015.

The story unraveled during GM’s monthly sales call on Monday. Michael DiGiovanni, GM’s executive director of global market and industry analysis, dropped the remark that an estimated 790,000 vehicles were sold in China in January. Total U.S. sales in January were about 668,000, DiGiovanni estimated. Automotive News [sub] thinks Di Giovanni is an optimist. According to their tally, 656,881 vehicles were sold in January. DiGiovanni’s Chinese number was even news to China, where official counts are not yet available.

“This is the first time in history that China has passed the U.S. in monthly sales,” DiGiovanni said. “We are estimating that China is going to come in at 10.7 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in January. The U.S. industry, we estimate at about 9.8 million SAAR.”

What happened?