Traditionally, May is the best month of the year in terms of new-vehicle sales, with momentum building progressively from early in the year to its late-Spring sales peak. But not this year.
May 2022 sales of 140,725 units, as estimated by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants (DAC), were down marginally (60 units) from April and up only slightly (165 units) from March. They were also down 8.5% from May 2021 and, most tellingly, 30.6% from May 2019 – the last comparable pre-pandemic month.
Year-to-date sales of 612,203 new vehicles similarly were down 10.8% from a year ago – and 23.4% from 2019.
Confirming the seriousness of that shortfall, the SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Sales Rate) for the month was just 1.36-million units, according to DAC – the fourth straight month of decline from its already low 2022 peak of 1.67-million in January. Annual sales in 2019 were 1.91-million and DAC estimates the current market demand as “at or above 2-million units.”
The problem, as it has been for the past year, is all on the supply side, primarily but not exclusively related to semiconductor chip shortages. Unfortunately, as DAC observes, the consistently declining SAAR suggests that the supply situation is getting worse, not better. And there is no immediate turnaround in sight.
Winners and losers
As has been the case for the past year, supply-side constraints and their effects on production and sales numbers for individual manufacturers more likely reflect product availability than market demand alone.
Of those automakers reporting May results, Genesis’ growth as a new brand kept it at the forefront in terms of percentage gain, up 66.4% from a year ago, and 62.2% for the year to date.
Lexus (+8.0%) and Volvo (+2.8%) were the only other brands to make absolute sales gains over the same month last year and Toyota outperformed the market average with sales down just 0.7%
Acura (-43.2%), reported the greatest year-over-year decline for the month, followed by Mazda (-31.5%), Kia (-29.4%), Honda (-28.2%), Subaru (-24.9%) and Hyundai (-23.7%).
A complete breakdown of results by manufacturer for the second quarter and first half will be available after the end of June.
