May 2011 Sales Recap

May 2011 delivered a mixed bag for the auto industry with some brands continuing their exceptional sales pace while others experienced heavy loses. Overall combined sales by all automakers fell nearly four percent compared to last year because of limited supply, higher gas prices and lower discounts. May was the first time this year the auto industry could not improve upon last year's sales. Japanese manufacturers carried the burden with the most significant supply limitation and thus experienced the largest drops in May with Toyota seeing a 32% drop and Lexus falling nearly 45%. Honda and Acura also saw sales drops of over 20% while Subaru and Infiniti posted double digit declines as well. Continued higher gas prices saw domestic manufacturers post modest gains for the month, powered by exceptional Jeep sales the Chrysler group did outsell Toyota to regain the number three sales rank in the country. Continuing their surging sales Hyundai and Kia combined to outsell Honda and Nissan thanks to improvements of 20.7 and 53.4% over the past year. Doing well also were luxury automakers with Bentley, Porsche, Jaguar, BMW and Audi experiencing significant sales improvements. Take a look at the chart below to see how all of the brands did in May.

A couple of days ago a Nissan Leaf commercial mocking the Chevy Volt debuted on You Tube, while the commercial probably had little effect on Leaf sales just yet (set to run on TV starting June 10) the Leaf did fine on its own posting its best sales yet of 1,142. While the Leaf is still selling relatively low numbers overall (lower than the Porsche Cayenne) it nearly doubled its April sales while Chevy sold only 481 Volts, slightly fewer than in April. All in all Chevy has sold 2,184 Volts in 2011 to Nissan's 2,167 Leafs.