The month of August is coming to a close, and it looks to have been a relatively good one for the auto industry, as sales were up even though automakers scaled back on their incentives and special offers.
Automotive analytics firm TrueCar recently released their projections for the month, and although the statistics are not final, they paint a pretty good picture for the month. Sales are expected to be up by about 8 percent compared to last year and 2 percent compared to the previous month across the industry.
The slight sales increase came despite the fact that automakers cut back on incentives and rebates by about 4 percent this month.
At the current rate, the industry will sell 12.2 million cars this year, about 700,000 more than 2010, but slightly behind industry expectations at the beginning of the year.
"The auto industry is a mixed bag this year, due to economic uncertainty; sales have improved compared to last year, but nowhere near the potential we had expected," said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends for TrueCar.
Toprak added that this uncertainty was not unique to the auto industry in August, and seemed to reflect a market trend across the country, given the up-and-down nature of the stock markets recently.