Though Labor Day is all the time in September, the U.S. auto business often counts the gross sales in August outcomes.
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China is still the No. 1 market, but sales there are slowing as the economy cools and cities impose auto ownership limits to curb smog and congestion.
General Motors’ sales fell 0.7 percent – a smaller loss than analysts had expected.
The Italian-American automaker stored alive its streak of consecutive months of topping year-ago gross sales figures – which now stands at 65. In a press release today, the company announced its best August US sales results in nine years, on the back of strong demand for trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Why, for example, would it want to keep both Ram and Chevrolet Silverado pickups? “In steady-state environments, it’ll make me $28 to $30 billion”, at a seasonally adjusted annual selling rate of 17 million new cars and trucks in the U.S. Last year, the weekend made up a fifth of August’s sales, according to JD Power. The Focus was down 26 percent, the Taurus fell 22 percent, and the Fusion dropped 4 percent. But its sales in China plunged 10 percent.
Labor Day is typically one of the biggest sales weekends of the year as dealers hold model year-end clearance sales and new models arrive.
Another interesting tidbit from the F-Series is that the EcoBoost engine option represented 63% of F-150 retail sales in August. Elkann, the great-great-grandson of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, also is the chairman of Exor, a private equity investment fund that owns 29.16 percent of Fiat Chrysler. The number-two US automaker said it sold 234,237 vehicles, a 5.0 percent increase year-on year.
Slumping sales are likely to force German automakers, which are unusually dependent on sales to China, to issue profit warnings, said Bernstein analyst Max Warburton in an August 27 report.
While under the hood, FCA also tweaked the Pentastar’s variable-valve timing system, added a new intake manifold, optimized fuel injection and increased the mill’s compression ratio from 10.2:1 to 11.3:1.
More than half of the plant’s employees work on the Cherokee.
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A messy calendar and a choppy stretch on stock markets would not alter what had been driving vehicle sales this year to the highest levels in at least a decade, said Karl Brauer, senior analyst at California-based Kelley Blue Book.
