Outside Of GM, Automakers Posted A Strong June

Let’s get right to it, GM is wishing that the month had gone better. Most every other major automaker is feeling great about General Motors saw a 3 percent decline in sales year over year for the month of June. However, GM aside, good news was abounding for other major automakers. Sales for the month of May were the strongest since 2005. Here are some of the year-over-year gains that were just released on July 1st:

FCA +8.2%

Ford +1.5%

Toyota +4.1%

Honda +4.2%

Nisan +13.3%

Subaru +7.2%

Kia +6.9%

Volkswagen +6.7%

The SAAR was also very strong, coming out to 17.16 million units, even if it’s actually a drop from the 17.8 million SAAR reported back in May. The industry is, without a doubt still looking very strong. Clearly Nissan and FCA had the best June. The two companies surged ahead a combined 21.5 percent compared with June of last year. For Nissan, it was all about trucks, SUV and crossover sales, which jumped an eye-opening 30.3 percent from June of 2014. Also to thank for the strong month for Nissan were Altima sales up 12.7 percent and Maxima sales jumping by 14.4 percent on the eighth edition of the sedan.

For FCA, the 8.2 percent increase was seen particularly strong amongst Jeep its Jeep brand, which saw its best June of all-time. Not to be outdone, the Chrysler brand saw a sales jump of 28 percent. Reid Bigland, head of U.S. sales for FCA said in a statement, “June represented another strong month for our company with sales up 8 percent and our 63rd consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases. Our all-new Jeep Renegade and Fiat 500X inventory started to arrive at dealerships in greater volume during June positioning us well for the summer-selling season.”

What could be driving the surging auto sector? According to Michelle Krebs, Senior Analyst at AutoTrader, it’s a group that many think have previously claimed aren’t buying cars. In a statement, Krebs said, “The older millennials are finally forming households, they are having families. They are opting to get out of their compact and mid size cars and are opting to move into small and mid size sport utilities.”

Certainly May was an incredible month for retail automotive. June, while not quite as strong went very well for certain automakers. Do you feel optimistic about the industry hitting that seventeen plus million unit sales target for the year? How did your dealership do last month? With July upon us, do you anticipate sales in July to be stronger than June?