July sales through the roof (domestic edition)

The seasonally-adjusted annual sales rate for July was 20.8 million units, topping last month's numbers and up 21% over a year ago. The big winner was Ford, which saw a 35.5% increase, with trucks up 38% and cars up 27%. Most notable was the sale of 126,905 F-series pickups, the best month for a model since the Model T in the 20s. Chrysler jumped 32% with much of that coming from its truck line (car sales were up only 4%, probably since the 300C, Magnum, and Charger were excluded from their promo), and GM was up 19% in the second month of its employee-discount promotion. The bad news for GM was a drop in passenger-car sales of 4.6 percent, which follows similar weakness in that segment in GM's June results. GM claims this is due to a reduction in fleet sales, but it still has to be a big concern for them considering Ford's car sales performance. We'll address the import side in just a little while, and see what effect a 26% jump in Big 3 sales had on the rest of the market.