by Calculated Risk on 9/01/2017 03:23:00 PM

Based on an estimate from WardsAuto, light vehicle sales were at a 16.03 million SAAR in August.

That is down 6% from August 2016, and down 3.9% from last month.


Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the historical light vehicle sales from the BEA (blue) and an estimate for August (red, light vehicle sales of 16.03 million SAAR mostly from WardsAuto).

This was well below the consensus forecast of 16.7 million for August (However Hurricane Harvey pushed down sales over the last week - and there will be some bounce back).

After two consecutive years of record sales, vehicle sales will be down in 2017.

The second graph shows light vehicle sales since the BEA started keeping data in 1967.

Note: dashed line is current estimated sales rate.