September 2011 - What Double-Dip Recession Edition

The U.S. auto industry appears to be roaring based on sales figures for the month of September 2011. This, despite every other economic indicator wafting between stagnant growth for the economy and an outright plunge into another recession. Don't tell the folks selling cars in these great United States, though, because people are buying despite the doom and gloom coming out of Wall Street.
Special note must be paid to Chrysler Group, whose brands not only all scored positive sales results on their own, but collectively gave the company the largest rise is sales volume last month versus the prior year. Enough units were even sold to push the Chrysler Group ahead of Toyota Motor Company in sales for September, making the top three sellers all domestics.

In fact, the only brands really hurting besides Saab (-61.93 percent) and an inexplicably bad showing by Mini (-18.12) were Toyota, Honda and their respective luxury brands. These two giants from Japan are still clawing their way back from the earthquake in Japan earlier this year and neither has their global production back up to full speed quite yet. That's in stark contrast to their cross-island competitor, Nissan North America, which hasn't been shy in letting U.S. customers know it's inventory is fully stocked, and which posted a healthy sales gain by volume of 25.28% last month in the U.S.

Check out the rest of last month's sales numbers in the table below.

*Brands and companies are displayed in descending order according to their percentage change in volume sales. There were 25 selling days in September 2011 and September 2010, so the change in monthly sales volume is the same as the change in average daily sales rate (DSR) for each brand/company.