February Sales are Blizzard Proof

The February outcome is a positive result from mixed emotions. Toyota's troubles and northeastern United State's horrible weather threatened the experts into thinking it may have been a slow down month in the growing upward trend. Not so much the case. The industry saw a month of nearly 780,000 sales which is a 13.5 percent increase from February, 2009. Relatively speaking, last February was about the bottom of the biggest auto slump in history. The February pace adjusted the SAAR rate to 10.4 million units, on the better side of the middle projections. Call that a B-.

Ford continues to look like one of the smartest brands in America, and coming from a GM loyalist, that is often a tough comment to spew. It is still important to remember, GM is half the brand it was last year, with 4 makes for sale, instead of the 8 that were on showroom floors in February of last year. Ford's February sales were up 45.6 percent over February of 2009, and 22 percent over January of this year. Car sales were the biggest winner with a 54 percent increase and trucks up 36 percent and SUV's up 39 percent. Even Lincoln and Mercury saw increases at 19 and 24 percent respectively. Those numbers put Ford at the #1 brand in America, at least for the month, and that is the first time that has happened since August, 1998 during a huge GM strike. 

Both GM and Ford enjoyed strong increases in fleet sales as the rental companies just back into the game renewing their aging inventory with new units. Fleet sales contributed to 29 percent of GM's 12.2 percent year over year increase. 40 percent of Ford's increases were based on fleet sales as well. Chrysler was even able to pull out a sales increase last month, 0.9 percent, and 60 percent of those sales were attributed to fleet purchases.

Other winning brands in the Big 7 included Nissan increasing 29.4 percent, Honda up 12.7 percent and Hyundai 10.2 percent (14 months in a row for Hyundai). Yes, it is correct, besides Chrysler and Toyota, every brand in the top 7 sales leaders pushed double digit sales increases.

Toyota's month did not end up as badly as it could have, and the brand missed about 18,000 sales from the typical month, leaving them 8.7 percent down from February, 2009, which was again, the bottom of the slump. The good news for consumers that were ever considering a Toyota, it has pushed the brand to release stronger incentives than it has in the past, including zero percent financing across approximately 80 percent of its models. That is a great conquest move in a volatile market where brand loyal on most brands is on shaky ground. Toyota does hold onto 6.6 percent of the cross shoppers that were previously interested in a Hummer, according to AutoTrader.com.