An Early Look at December Sales

November was a tough month to call, sales wise, what with Hurricane Sandy and her potential to either lift or drag sales. (Or a bit of both.) There were also the Thanksgiving Weekend sales events to consider.

December should be a bit more straight forward, but it is still worth noting that fully 40% of the month's sales will occur during the last eight days of the month.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that so far retail sales are holding up well. The current pace and historical pattern point to retail sales this month of around 1.12m units and a SAAR 12.6m. This compares with unit sales of around 965,000 and a SAAR of 13.0m last month. If we assume a fleet mix of around 18% then December will end with total sales of around 1.36m and a SAAR of 15.3m. This compares to 1.14m units and SAAR of 15.5m last month. (This fleet number is a bit tough to call as December is typically about 1% higher than November, but last month was way below normal at 15.8%, so we are assuming a small rebound in December.)

Looking at retail share GM and BMW are up quite a bit over last month while Nissan, the South Korean makes and Honda were down some. Everyone else looks stable.

Here are the details: