Car Sales In June Were Awful! Was There Any Good News For The Detroit Three?

Implications: June car sales results left auto industry executives scratching their heads trying to come up with anything positive about results that left the industry running at a seasonally adjusted 13.58 million units.

Analysis: Beaten down by high gas prices and other contributors to household financial stress, they bought 18% (unadjusted for fewer sales days) fewer vehicles than a year earlier. On an adjusted basis the falloff was 8%.

And supply constraints depressed sales even further, because those who were in the market wanted more small cars than the industry could deliver as it tries to catch up with consumers desire for small-fuel efficient cars.

The light-vehicles sales pace for the year is now running at a seasonally adjusted 13.58 million units. That's three million units below the 2005 pace, and over one million units behind what the most pessimistic observers were forecasting just a few months ago.

The June results left industry execs searching for the bottom of a market that has fallen faster and further than anyone could have foreseen before gas prices skyrocketed to about $4 a gallon at the end of June from $3 a gallon at the beginning of the year.

Was there ANY good news for the domestics? let's take a look.

General Motors: GM, no stranger to the incentive game, came up with a "72 Hour Sale" at the end of the month (it has now been extended). The promotion helped GM gain a little traction going into July. That, combined with Toyota's larger-than-expected decline kept the company as the U.S. biggest carmaker, a title already conceded to Toyota earlier in the month.

GM's retail car sales rose by more than 8%, and sales of its crossovers were up more than 21% in June (on an adjusted basis.)

GM was even able to find some good news in sales of its largest vehicles. Sales of the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, while down, were better than in previous months.

One more sour note: Sales of the troubled brand Hummer were off 59% in June, putting more pressure on the company to decide the brand's future.

Ford:  Abysmal sales of large trucks and SUV's made it harder for Ford to find any good news.

Execs pointed out that constrained inventories of smaller-more fuel efficient vehicles prevented dealers from selling more of them. I wonder whose fault that was?

However, retail sales of passenger cars were up 3% from a year ago, and crossovers showed a 1% gain. Ford's four-cylinder cars were hot sellers, with sizeable gains.

Chrysler: There was very little good to report for Chrysler in June.

Four models showed sales increases. Minivans, the Jeep Patriot, low volume (77 units) Viper, and the Dodge Journey which wasn't available last year, sold 5,162 units.