Happy July 4th.. err.. two days late. I hope you enjoyed your holiday as much as I know I did. It is the month of July, which can only mean one thing: a progress report of the first half of the year is in order. June offered the auto industry something special (according to analysts anyway). Last month was the month that those in know expected for the auto industry to break through the 10,000,000 dollar barrier and prove to the nation that we are finally seeing a long overdue recovery in auto sells.. Well, um.. to put it lightly that didn’t happen. In fact, overall auto sells fell from 9.9 million in May to 9.5 million in June. While this is not necessarily good news we can at least take solace in the fact that doom and gloom political pundits making predictions at the beginning of the year of our impending GREAT DEPRESSION BY JUNE were wrong. (something I always love to see)

So the entire industry fell a little lower but there has to be a silver lining! There is, and it is measured by the rate of failure. Ford had something to celebrate (sort of). While the entire industry was losing profit margins in the American market, they only fell 11%! The good news for them? Everybody else fell more, giving them a 3 point increase in overall market share: they now control 18% of the market. That means that Ford (a company that by many opinions should have failed like many of their models do years ago) has outsold Toyota in the first 6 months of this year to become the 2nd place automaker only to be outsold by GM! Toyota is not the only company losing ground in the American market though… Nissan has fallen out of the big 6! Who took their place: Hyundai. This marks the first time (EVER) that the 6 best selling automakers in the U.S. have not been based in the U.S. and Japan alone. One more shift that I find to be interesting and then I’ll leave you to your exciting life.. in the luxury category. Lexus has been outsold in the U.S. market by none other than the German automaker B.M.W. This must be exciting news for them, many (myself included) really didn’t think that luxury brands would survive in this GREAT DEPRESSION we are now going through.. And we thought they had it rough in the 1930’s…