Car Stock Exchange Vehicle Sales Data Through July

With 23 vehicles racing down the stretch run to retirement after six months of trading on the Car Stock Exchange, five have already surpassed our Edmunds.com forecasts after five months of sales with another four in position to eclipse the predictions that were made well in advance of their showroom sales launches. (See sales table at end of blog posting)

The Chevy HHR SS, MINI Clubman, Toyota Corolla, BMW M3 and Dodge Journey have all exceeded our six month sales targets after just 5 months with the Subaru Impreza WRX STI, Nissan Murano, Pontiac Vibe and Hyundai Sonata positioned to push past those numbers when six months of sales are tallied up at the end of August. The Matrix version of the Corolla could also top the estimate.

In shear numbers, the Toyota Corolla at 160,559 and the Dodge Journey at 25,438 after five full months of sales are very impressive compared to our team's forecasting. The Corolla is the number one selling nameplate of all-time and is benefitting from the buying shift while Dodge flooded the media with blanket marketing and advertising campaigns during big sports play-offs in the Spring.

We know that all the vehicles are "all-new" because that's how they qualified for CSX trading. Is there another theme to those that surpassed our estimates? With the exception of the Journey and Murano crossovers, they are all small, though two are high performance. Fuel efficiency is certainly a factor, reflecting the buying shift of 2008 with $4-plus gas prices.

Shockers on the CSX list include the Saturn Astra, the small, fuel efficient German-made GM car that's been a hit elsewhere in the world but in the U.S. yet, at least based on our predictions. The Tahoe and Yukon SUV hybrids have yet to catch on as well.

All stock prices on the Car Stock Exchange are trading at huge premiums to their correlated sales so August is the month for shorts, I'm talking about CSX short selling to capitalize on the much lower closing prices at the end of this month.

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• Posted by: Richard Saxton August 5, 2008, 4:00 AM
• Categories: Auto Sales Updates