Cleveland, Ohio – Auto sales rebounded in June after a slight dip in May with most companies reporting record sales for the month. Ford, FCA, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai/Kia all posted gains, with General Motors posting a slight dip and Toyota falling about 10,000 units.
June 2016 had one more selling day than June 2015, a reversal from May which had two fewer selling days. So an increase had been expected.
Breaking down each automaker:
- General Motors – 255,210, -1.6%. GM’s gradual draw-down of rental car sales continued in June as retail sales gained while wholesale units lagged. Chevrolet small pickups, SUVs, and crossovers performed well, but several high-volume vehicles are in the midst of launches, limiting availability. The Chevy Cruze, for example, fell 17.6% as deliveries to dealerships for the new model have only begun recently. A bright spot, the new Cadillac XT5 small crossover had a great month, becoming the brand’s best seller.
- Ford Motor Co. – 240,109, 6.4%. Though car sales were down, a 28.6% gain for F-Series pickups, coupled with a 19% jump for Transit vans more than compensated for those declines. Company officials say Ford had its best first half of a year since 2006. Lincoln also had a good month with gains from both cars and SUVs.
- Toyota Motor Co. – 198,257, -5.6%. Toyota and Lexus car sales fell 9.9% and 13.9% respectively, SUV sales were flat, and truck sales were down slightly. With big declines from the Prius, Yaris, and Camry, the only real bright spots were the RAV4 (up 10.2%) and Land Cruiser (up 36.7%) SUVs. But even with strong numbers from those two vehicles, SUV numbers were flat as the Highlander and Sequoia posted double-digit declines.
- FCA US LLC – 197,073, 6.5%. Jeep continues to dominate FCA’s results, with a 17% June gain that came from a near doubling of Renegade small SUV sales. Fiat sales were down, but Dodge posted a slight gain, reversing recent declines for the car-heavy brand. At the rate that FCA has been climbing this year and Toyota has been declining, company sales could conceivably vault it to the No. 3 spot from No. 4 in sales by the end of July. In June, fewer than 1,200 separated the brands. Year-to-date, the gap is only 45,541 units. A year ago, the gap was more than 3x as large.
- Nissan Group – 140,553, 13.1%. A record June stemmed from big increases from Versa and Sentra small cars. The only Nissan car to post a significant decline was the Leaf electric vehicle, down 47.2%. The popularity of the Rogue small crossover continues to grow and was up 25.8% in June. Infiniti’s results were more typical of the rest of the industry with big gains from crossovers and SUVs offsetting losses for cars.
- American Honda Co. – 138,715, 3.2%. Honda sold 2,472 Ridgeline pickups in June, returning to the truck market after several years away. Those trucks, along with increases for the Pilot and CR-V helped offset falling sales for the smaller HR-V crossover. All of the company’s major cars gained during the month.
- Hyundai/Kia – 130,083, 6.9%. June’s going to go down as a memorable month for Hyundai’s Kia subsidiary. The brand won the top quality spot in JD Power’s annual initial quality survey, and sales jumped 15.6%. The big gains for Kia counteracted flat sales at Hyundai (up 8 vehicles or 0.013% from last year). Sales of the Kia Rio subcompact and Sportage SUV more than doubled, and the Forte compact posted a 16% jump. At Hyundai, all car models fell, but Santa Fe crossover sales spiked 75.6%.
Source: Automakers