July 2024 U.S. Auto Sales

As always, unless it is the end of a quarter, we only see numbers from the automakers that report sales monthly.  However, it’s enough info to know the trend of up or down versus the same month of 2023, in this case July.  It appears that last month, the industry was up around 2%, and any gain is always a reason for automakers to smile.

Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, and Mazda all had gains, but Mazda killed it with a 30% increase due to some new SUV entries they did not have a year ago, and their gradual transition to becoming more of a luxury brand.  Toyota fell 8%, and talking to the dealers, they are having problems getting enough inventory of some of the vehicle models.

Ford took the overall volume spot back for July but sales were down a little less than 1% versus July 2023.  The Ford/Toyota battle has been a month-to—month seesaw all year, but Ford has opened up a year-to-date lead of over 100,000 vehicles through the first 7 months of 2024.  That is a lot of vehicles, but one Toyota can close with increased production. 

Honda saw increases in the CR-V and the Civic, with hybrids accounting for 50% of CR-V sales.  I’ve been telling you that hybrids were the new big thing to bridge the transition from gas to electric.  There were issues at a Honda assembly plant that caused a lack of production of Accord, but had a bigger effect on Acura Integra and TLX, causing Acura sales to be below last year.  Subaru is riding a modest increase on the strength of the new Crosstrek.  The new Forester I just reviewed should help them the rest of this year as it gets traction.

At Hyundai, they saw a big jump for the redesigned Palisade, but sister Kia was down 10%, which is unusual.  Kia did see increases in Seltos and Sportage, and they sold about 1,800 of the new electric SUV the EV9 that I reviewed this week.  Genesis SUV sales were up, but the sedan sales were down more causing an overall decrease from July 2023.