AUTO SALES BLOODBATH: Every OEM Misses April Sales Estimates As Inventories Continue To Soar.

After an abysmal March print and growing speculation on wall street that auto sales are looking less like a “plateau” (Ford’s label not ours) and more like a debt-fueled bubble on the verge of an epic collapse, auto investors were looking toward April auto sales for signs of hope. Unfortunately, the “hope” trade failed to materialize as every single, major auto OEM missed their April sales estimates in fairly spectacular fashion.

Meanwhile, inventory days are still trending higher as OEMs continue to push product on to dealer lots even though sale through to end customers has seemingly stalled.

GM, one of the few OEMs to actually disclose dealer inventories in monthly sales releases, reported that April inventories increased to 100 days (935,758 vehicles) from 98 days at the end of March and just 71 days (681,402 vehicles) in April 2016. But please don’t worry because GM would like for you to know that their soaring inventories are normal and “reflect strong sales”…no really.

It remains to be seen if Detroit is on the brink of a run-of-the-mill recession, or if they’ve stuffed the sales channels deep enough to threaten another 2007-08 collapse.