August Vehicle Sales

The market gets excited for a while about August vehicle sales of 14.1 million at a SAAR, the highest level since May 2008. It doesn't take much sleuthing to find that the "Cash for Clunkers" program accounted for this strength, and the corollary is that the sales were probably borrowed from the normal September/October uptick. I talked to my neighbor who cashed in a Subaru that was a clunker only in Government terms, and wound up netting a Chevy Cobalt for about 1/3 off the lowest possible price imaginable under the convoluted pricing system. He's an engineer and worked the pencil furiously, as did thousands of others.

Nissan dealers were notified that some "hot" 2010 models are not being delivered in September/October, but in January. What does Nissan know? They know that there's no benefit in pushing deliveries of a decent value sports sedan and having it languish in lots and then have to throw money at their dealers. It's better to wait, take the temperature of the market, and produce JIT the right number of cars for the market when better data is available. Watch what the smart companies are doing, and Nissan is smarter than the average metal-bending automotive company.

Incidentally, looking over my neighbor's Cobalt, which I badly wanted to like and which seemed like a good value, I couldn't help but notice the poor fit and finish. It is irritating and inexcusable to see this after decades of Japanese leadership in quality. The trunk appears to be offset to one side, and the left hinge is causing one side to be slightly higher than the other. The buyer will get it taken care of because GM is being very solicitous, but there's no excuse for this kind of poor performance.