A Look at Sales Figures for 2015 Comes with a Warning

The sales of new vehicles for 2015 were the highest it’s ever been in the US.  The automotive industry was able to sell 17.4 million new vehicles to consumers of the past twelve months, which shows an amazing ability to bounce back.  It wasn’t very many years ago, six to be exact, that GM and Chrysler both filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Ford sold off the Premier Automotive Group and all its premium brands except for Lincoln.  This massive sales number certainly rains in some serious success in the automotive industry, but every success comes with some form of a warning as well.

The highly respected firm of Merrill Lynch predicts the sales will continue to increase and reach a total of 20 million units by the 2018 model year, but with new cars being sold in these numbers what are we creating?  The answer is a plethora of used vehicles that need to be resold in some fashion.  The last time we saw this type of growth was during the 1920s and the end of that particular decade did not bode well for any industry in America.  The worry is more about the fact that as we replace some of our aging cars and new car sales increase.

As much as these warnings rain on the parade of the sales, the projection is that the sales will steady between 11 million and 18 million units once the market levels off.  Most of the companies that sell cars in the US have already taken steps to help when this leveling off does take place (GM partnering with Lyft is an example).  The goal is to be ready for this time and not expect sales to continue to increase exponentially for the next several years, because at some point they won’t.

As this past year was the best year in sales since 2000, the total vehicles sold for 2015 was 17,470,659 which beat that record setting year of 2000 by 68,173.  Some of the notable increases included Tesla which sold 22,800 which was up 26.7 percent, Rolls-Royce sold 1,140, an increase of 2.6 percent, Bentley sold 2,686 which was an increase of 10.6 percent and Lamborghini moved 756 cars to enjoy an increase of 2.7 percent.  Of course the VW diesel emissions scandal of this past year took away what was turning out to be one of the most impressive sales years ever and ended the year with an increase in sales of only 0.4 percent.

Here is how the entire market for the US came out in regards to sales:

1. General Motors – 3,082,366 – Overall an increase of five percent for the year.
2. Ford – 2,613,162 – An increase of 5.3 percent.
3. Toyota Motor Sales – 2,499,313 – Up 5.3 percent.
4. Chrysler LLC – 2,243,907 – A seven percent increase over the previous year.
5. American Honda – 1,586,551 – This showed an increase of three percent.
6. Nissan Group – 1,484,918 – Showed a 7.1 percent increase.
7. Hyundai – 761,710 – This was an increase of five percent.
8. Kia – 625,818 – Reflects an increase of 7.9 percent.
9. Subaru – 582,675 – Shows an improvement of 13.4 percent.
10. BMW Group – 404,537 – Made a small but 2.2 percent increase in sales.
11. Mercedes-Benz USA – 380,461 – An improvement of 3.8 percent.
12. Volkswagen – 349,440 – This was a drop of 4.8 percent overall.
13. Mazda – 319,184 – This was an increase of 4.4 percent.
14. Audi – 202,202 – Giving Audi an increase of 11.1 percent.
15. Mitsubishi – 95,342 – This is seriously positive with a 22.8 percent increase.
16. Jaguar/Land Rover – 85,048 – This brings a strong 26.5 percent improvement in sales.
17. Volvo – 70,047 – This gives the safety laden brand a 24.3 percent increase.
18. Porsche – 51,756 – The sports brand is up 10.1 percent overall.

As you can easily see there is a great deal of drop off from the brands that live on volume sales and those that only deal in sports cars and high powered machines.  With this in mind you do see that every brand seemed to improve their overall sales with the exception of Volkswagen which makes perfect sense for the overall market sales.  As we enter the next year of sales it will be interesting to see how well some of these brands do compared to this already record setting year.