East Coast Winter Impacts February Auto Sales

Retail auto sales numbers have shined lately. We reported previously retail automotive sales numbers for December and January were strong, which points towards a strong 2015. Speaking about the uptick in to the Wall Street Journal, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said, “This decline in gas prices is a definite plus for the industry both in consumer attitude and the type of vehicles they buy.”

Fast forward one month and February is now in the rearview mirror. How did retail automotive do last month?

Not as well as January. Just as analysts pointed to lower prices at the pump in driving sales up, they are now looking at a rough winter as partially to blame for sales figures in February. Michelle Krebs, Senior Analyst at AutoTrader.com, told Bloomberg, “It’s hard to believe weather wasn’t a factor. The Northeast is a huge small-utility market, so that had to have some impact. I’m not worried that they’re off a couple of percentage points. They’ll probably make it up in March and April.”

Another factor contributing to sales that showed slow growth were the continual uptick in gas prices. Avery Ash, a spokesman for AAA said in a statement, “Paying $2 for gas will seem like a distant memory for most drivers in the coming weeks. Gasoline remains much cheaper than in recent years, but drivers may not appreciate that fact given the steep increase in price over the past month.”

According to Forbes, February was an up as well as down month for Ford. Sales numbers for the blue oval automakers year over year declined by 2 percent, however truck sales were up 4%. Mark LaNeve, VP of U.S Marketing for Ford told Forbes, “Strong customer demand for the all-new F-150 drove strong February F-Series retail sales results.” Car sales for Ford declined 8 percent. While Ford had struggles FCA US continued to climb with a 6 percent year over year sales increase. Reid Bigland, Chrysler’s Head of U.S. Sales said in a statement, “In spite of snow and bitter cold that slowed auto sales in many regions of the country, FCA US still turned in a 6 percent sales increase.”

GM had a very strong February for their SUV, truck and van segment which saw a 36 percent increase in sales, while overall numbers were up 4 percent. Kurt McNeil, GM’s U.S. Vice President of Sales Operation,s said in a statement, “Our new SUVs and crossovers, combined with the three-pickup strategy we outlined more than a year ago, are dovetailing perfectly with the growing U.S. economy and a stronger job market.”

Toyota saw the largest increase among major automakers with a 13 percent year over year increase in sales, while Honda saw an uptick of just 5 percent, falling short of the 11 percent analysts had predicted. Mark Wakefield managing director of the automotive segment of the consulting firm AlixPartners told Bloomberg, “People are feeling good about the economy and some of this money is going to go to buy new cars. All signs are green.”