• October 29, 2010

Edmunds.com is predicting October will be a decent auto sales month at around 11.9 million units, if the sales are extrapolated to the whole year. "That's good news," says CEO Jeremy Anwyl. "October is a pivot month so we are moving from 2010 to 11 models. The indicators are modestly good. Sales levels are trending up."

The firm says that the good news is that the new numbers are for the first time outside a range of 11.3 to 11.7 million that has been standard for the year. And Anwyl says the new numbers, while not astonishing, weren't boosted by sales events or big incentives. "We did see a sales drop off the last week of the month, but directionally the new numbers are significant," he says. "We would have expected 11.5 million annually adjusted if conditions hadn't changed at all. So sales are occuring even though sale incentives are down, and fleet volume is down. Consumers are picking up that slack at retail."

Still, Anwyl says the unusual consideration is that a recovery usually has a hockey stick profile with a steep sales improvement. "We are not seeing that. We are seeing sales drifting along the bottom. It's been doing that for two years and that's very unusual." He says that based on the recoveries usually look, the market should be at around 14 million units now. "It shows that something really different is going on."