Auto sales are down for the fourth consecutive month. Final numbers are not yet in, but the preliminary year-over-year totals are miserable.

Nearly every company performed worse than expected, and expectations were down across the board.

Boom Over

Reuters reports Automakers’ April U.S. Sales Drop; Wall St. Fears Boom is Over.

• GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker, reported a 6% decline in April sales to 244,406 vehicles.
• Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, reported a 7.2% decline in April. Ford car sales dropped 21% and trucks declined 4.2%, while SUV sales rose 1.2%.
• Toyota reported a drop of 4.4%. Lexus sales slid 11.1%. U.S. car sales at the Japanese automaker were down 10.4%, while truck sales were up 2.1%.
• Fiat-Chrysler reported sales were off 7%

"GM said its consumer discounts were equivalent to 11.7 percent of the transaction price. The automaker also said its inventory level rose to 100 days of supply at the end of April versus around 70 days at the end of 2016. Recent levels have worried analysts, and GM has promised inventories will be down by the end of 2017."

Missed Estimates

Bloomberg reports Auto Sales Fall for Fourth Straight Month

Quote of the Day

The U.S. market is plateauing, Mark LaNeve, Ford’s vice president of U.S. marketing, sales and service, said on a call with analysts and reporters.

"I’m not discouraged by the number," he said. "In this kind of industry, there’s going to be these kinds of months."

Plateauing? Really?

I discussed complacency yesterday in Three Big Red Flags for Auto Sales.

The three red flags according to Automotive News are leasing, incentives, and inventory.  I added a fourth: complacency in the face of falling demand and rising incentives.

Effect on GDP

Auto sales make up about 20% of consumer spending. The big second quarter GDP bounce economists expect is highly unlikely, to say the least.