The Six Vehicles That Wildly Outdid Reasonable Sales Expectations in America in August 2020
Gauging economic health during the latter stages of 2020 is proving remarkably challenging. On the one hand, there’s grievous unemployment caused by COVID-19 shutdowns; on the other hand, bicycle sales are booming and backyard pool installations skyrocketed. Contrast the fact that the Dow Jones isn’t far from its six-month high with a 32 percent U.S. GDP loss in Q2.
The same sort of diametrically opposed outcomes are visible in the U.S. auto industry, as well. Only a handful of automakers still report monthly sales figures – Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Toyota, Volvo – yet within those brands there were remarkably different results coming out as we exit the summer. We wanted to find the vehicles that destroyed reasonable recovery rates in August with significant year-over-year improvements. But we didn’t expect them all to originate from the same two automakers.
To get a clear gauge on the biggest overperformers, we excluded vehicles that didn’t produce at least 500 sales in August 2020, the kind of volume that should eliminate the wild fluctuations of severely low-volume models. Vehicles that are new to market or returning from hiatus (say hello to the second-generation Toyota Venza) are ineligible, as well.
Sales at the 10 remaining reporting brands are down 19 percent through the first two-thirds of 2020 and were still off last year’s pace by 18 percent in August 2020. Yet within those showrooms, there were six models that, despite everything that’s wrong with 2020, sold in far greater numbers last month than during the same period one year ago.
Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Driving.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars and Instagram.
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Volvo may be showing a big increase year-over-year, but they are still selling tiny numbers of cars. So why does it really matter? Hopefully they are selling enough to stay around for a while. I'm all for driving things you don't see 25 of in every parking lot though.
Kia is the next Toyota.