Edmunds.com Forecasts Best April Car Sales Since 2007

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — April 25, 2013 — Edmunds.com, the premier resource for automotive information, forecasts that 1,306,901 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. in April for an estimated Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of 15.2 million light vehicles. This will be a 10.4 percent increase from April 2012, but a 10.0 percent decrease from last month.

"We're forecasting the best April car sales since 2007, and that's consistent with the strong growth we've seen in the last several months," says Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Jessica Caldwell. "Sales are almost back to pre-recession levels, so as long as automakers keep reporting their best sales in at least five years, we'll continue to be in good shape."

SALES VOLUME FORECAST, BY MANUFACTURER

Sales Volume	Apr-13 Forecast	Apr-12	Mar-13	Change from Apr 2012*	Change from Mar 2013*
GM	237,835	213,387	245,950	11.5%	-3.3%
Ford	208,842	179,658	235,643	16.2%	-11.4%
Toyota	183,933	178,044	205,342	3.3%	-10.4%
Chrysler Group	156,194	141,165	171,603	10.6%	-9.0%
Honda	132,520	122,012	136,038	8.6%	-2.6%
Nissan	92,976	71,329	137,726	30.3%	-32.5%
Industry	1,306,901	1,183,866	1,452,269	10.4%	-10.0%

*NOTE: April 2013 had 25 selling days, April 2012 had 24 and March 2013 had 27.

Edmunds.com estimates that retail SAAR will come in at 12.4 million vehicles in April, with fleet transactions accounting for 18.7 percent of total sales. An estimated 3.25 million used cars will be sold in April, for a SAAR of 37.0 million (compared to 3.43 million — or a SAAR of 36.7 million — used car sales in March).

AUTOMAKER PERFORMANCEEdmunds.com projects that in April Nissan will have a bigger year-over-year sales increase (30.3%) than any other major automaker. Nissan will achieve this distinction despite incurring the biggest sales decrease (-32.5%) of any automaker from March to April. This anomaly can be attributed to Nissan's annual practice of aggressively pushing sales to close out its fiscal year, which ended in March.

MARKET SHARE FORECAST, BY MANUFACTURER

Market Share	Apr-13 Forecast	Apr-12	Mar-13	Change from April 2012(Percentage pts.)	Change from March 2013(Percentage pts.)
GM	18.2%	18.0%	16.9%	0.2%	1.3%
Ford	16.0%	15.2%	16.2%	0.8%	-0.2%
Toyota	14.1%	15.0%	14.1%	-1.0%	-0.1%
Chrysler Group	12.0%	11.9%	11.8%	0.0%	0.1%
Honda	10.1%	10.3%	9.4%	-0.2%	0.8%
Nissan	7.1%	6.0%	9.5%	1.1%	-2.4%

Edmunds.com also found that even as most automakers manage to increase sales year over year, Hyundai and Kia will stand out in April for delivering fewer sales than in 2012. As a result Hyundai and Kia will see its U.S. sales share drop a full percentage point from 9.3 percent in April 2012 to 8.3 percent this month.

More insight into recent auto industry trends can be found in Edmunds.com's Industry Center at http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/.