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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

EXCLUSIVE: March Auto Sales Are Already On Track To Smash Official Estimates

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Over the next eight hours, twenty automakers will report March auto sales in the U.S. Already, it appears the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales will top all industry estimates, new data out of Business Insider shows.

First out the gate this month is Chrysler, with a better-than-expected sales gain of 34.2 percent, moving 163,381 units in March.

At that healthy gain, Business Insider estimates total U.S. SAAR will run between 15.2 million and 16.1 million.

This is well above current estimates of 14.6 million units, per Bloomberg.

The last time auto sales topped an annualized pace of 15.2 million was four years ago, in February 2008.

BI employed two models to make this prediction, one that tracks changes in market share tied to a second measuring impact of monthly total sales to SAAR.

Over the past year, Chrysler's market share has fluctuated between roughly between 10 and 12 percent, touching the upper bounds recently. The BI estimated range would fall above the actual SAAR if Chrysler is able to break through the 12 percent market share mark.

Setting that rate as the predicated final rate would mean total March sales, when including automakers from General Motors to Tata Motor (Jaguar, Land Rover), would hit 1,394,305 units, with an upwards bounds of 1,476,373.

Using those two points, we constructed the average and median number with which March units were multiplied by to get the ultimate SAAR. That multiplier is 10.8761615. All together, the range above is constructed when applying both.

Below, a snapshot of the model's output.

Chart