“Toyota is out with preliminary numbers for March, selling more than 200,000 units for the first time since 2008.
With automakers representing some 70 percent of U.S. sales reporting, Business Insider predicts total sales for the month may top 1.4 million, for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales between 15.0 and 15.4 million units.
That number is on the low end of earlier projections, but substantively above Wall Street estimates for a 14.6 million pace.
Below output from the Business Insider model, updated with results from Volkswagen and Toyota.
 Eric Platt/Business Insider |
UPDATE (10:16 a.m. EST):
General Motors’ sales miss in March has endangered the auto industry’s ability to top an annualized sales pace of 15 million units, new data out of Business Insider shows.
The company reported a sales improvement of 12 percent during the month, moving 231,052 vehicles.
That number, combined with other recent reports from Ford, Nissan and Chrysler, puts total sales for the month at 754,168 already.
It’s important to note that GM has logged a steadily declining market share over the past three quarters — meaning actual market share for the four companies that have already reported could fall below 54 percent. If that’s the case, SAAR for March would come in above 15.2 million.
Below, output from the Business Insider model.
 Eric Platt/Business Insider |
UPDATE (9:54 a.m. EST):
Over the past few minutes, automakers Ford and Nissan have released March 2012 sales results, both logging substantive improvements over year ago results.
Together with Chrysler Group, the three automakers represent more than 35 percent of the U.S. auto market.
With these results in, Business Insider is refining its original model of the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales to between 15.4 and 15.9 million, an impressive improvement from last month’s strong results and the best reading in more than four years.
Below, output from the updated model.
 Eric Platt/Business Insider |
One important caveat, the annualized rate is based on the median multiplier over the past 20 years, which is slightly higher than the multiplier logged in 2011.
ORIGINAL (8:50 a.m. EST):
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.
 Eric Platt/Business Insider |
Business Insider will continually update this throughout the day and define a smaller range of annualized auto sales as other automakers report. “
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