The traditional Detroit automakers and Nissan Motor all reported U.S. vehicle sales for August that missed analyst estimates. Ford and General Motors sold fewer discounted models to fleet buyers while pickups and sport utility vehicles experienced a rare decline.
Sales of Ford’s F-Series pickups, the top-selling vehicle line in America, fell, as did Explorer SUV deliveries, the company reported in a statement. Car sales plunged 25 percent as low fuel prices continued to steer buyers into SUVs and trucks. Ford sold a total of 213,411 vehicles in August, excluding its heavy trucks, down 8.8 percent. Analysts had forecast an 8.2 percent drop. GM sales fell 5.2 percent in August, a little steeper than the 4.9 percent drop that analysts projected.
Automakers haven’t been chasing sales at any cost, the practice that helped force GM and Chrysler to restructure through bankruptcy in 2009. But another batch of discounts may emerge this month to clear out inventory of the outgoing models, said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at Edmunds.com.
“It wasn’t exactly a blockbuster month in August, so that puts extra pressure on the industry to step up its game in September, especially this coming Labor Day weekend,” she said in an e-mailed statement. “We’re at a critical time where dealers need to clear out 2016 inventory to make room for 2017s.”
August reports arriving on Thursday may show a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of about 17.2 million cars and light trucks, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts, down from a 17.9 million rate in July that was the highest of the year. Incentives were lower than in July, when GM offered 20 percent cash back on several Chevrolet models, according to vehicle-shopping website TrueCar. GM also projects a 17.2 million pace for August, bringing the year-to-date selling rate to 17.3 million.Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said its sales rose 3.1 percent during the month, missing analysts estimates for a 5 percent increase. Sales of its Ram pickup slipped 0.2 percent, smaller than declines GM and Ford reported for their full-size trucks.
GM said that its sales decline is due in large part to its ongoing pullback in rental-fleet sales, which were down 34 percent in the month, and a reduction in sales incentives. For the year, average transaction prices have increased by $2,500, it said in a statement.
Deliveries of its highly profitable large pickups fell: Chevrolet Silverado sales were down 4.7 percent and GMC Sierra fell 18 percent.
Nissan sales fell 6.5 percent, a steeper drop than the 0.6 percent decline that was the average of six analyst estimates. While deliveries by its Infiniti premium brand slipped 1.8 percent, sales by the namesake brand dropped 6.9 percent.
The Nissan brand did set an August record for sales of crossovers, SUVs and pickups with a 19 percent gain, according to an e-mailed statement. Sales of the Frontier midsize pickup more than doubled while Murano crossover deliveries jumped 29 percent.
Ford said its sales to fleet buyers fell 10 percent last month, while retail sales to individual customers were off by 8 percent. Despite the drop, average prices continued to climb, which support profits even if industrywide sales were to fall this year for the first time in seven years.
“Strong sales of high-end Lincoln vehicles and Ford SUVs also helped us continue outpacing the industry in average transaction pricing, which increased $1,200 versus a year ago,” Mark LaNeve, Ford’s U.S. sales chief, said in a statement. Sales of the Lincoln MKX SUV rose 50 percent last month.
While discounts have, at least on paper, crept back up to pre-recession levels, there’s more cushion than ever: Transaction prices are at a record high as buyers opt for bigger vehicles with nicer interiors, electronics and driver-assist features. With that profit protection, carmakers don’t mind if the industry snaps a record streak of sales increases.
The discipline is helping the industry stay profitable while it’s still backed by strong, if weakening, underlying trends: low unemployment, available credit, high equity valuations, cheap gasoline. Consumer confidence jumped this month, the Conference Board reported this week, beating estimates and rising to the highest level in almost a year.
Even so, that has failed to inspire investors, who have been preoccupied with the lack of growth in the U.S. market and potential disruption to the industry from new technology, new entrants and new concepts of personal mobility. While the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 6.2 percent this year through Wednesday, GM lost 6.1 percent, Ford fell 11 percent and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV plunged 27 percent. And it’s not just the traditional U.S. automakers under pressure from investors: Toyota Motor Corp., Daimler AG and BMW AG have all dropped 17 percent or more in 2016.
With the discounts eased, industrywide sales may have fallen about 3.5 percent in August, according to the average estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Projected declines include a 6.6 percent drop for Volkswagen AG’s VW and Audi brands.
Only Fiat Chrysler among the biggest automakers was projected to report more than a 1 percent gain. The average estimate for a 5 percent increase is the result of calculations based on the revised year-earlier result. Facing a dealer lawsuit and a federal probe into its sales-reporting practices, the company restated its sales results from January 2011 to June 2016. Under the new practices, the August 2015 tally is 190,887 — 10,785 fewer than originally reported, making for an easier comparison.
