Inflation Alert! The auto industry-standard Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of sales, plummeted 13.4% from the same period in 2019 to 14.75 million SAAR. This is the lowest (outside of lockdowns), since exiting the Great Recession in October 2012.
So that's what they are doing with all these vehicles that cannot be sold yet! Interestingly (and I bet because of media coverage like the above), Ford had plans in July to send unfinished F150's to its dealers on an opt-in basis, and let them blend in like waldo on their lots...
As a whole, the auto industry-standard Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of sales, plummeted to 15.865 million from 17.832 million SAAR in June 2019.
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Total Vehicle Sales [TOTALSA], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA, August 4, 2021.
Additionally, available inventories continue to drop!
1.0=~30 days inventory (2.0 or 60 days considered healthy...), JUNE: .804!
Is this the beginning of the car bubble beginning to seize up? Will consumers be willing to continue to pay crazy high prices for few options as inventories continue to dwindle?
