September 2012 New Car Sales Expected To Be Up Nearly Eleven Percent

New car pricing site TrueCar.com released its September 2012 sales and incentives forecast on September 26. The forecast shows the following:

For September 2012, new light vehicle sales in the U.S. (including fleet) is expected to be 1,163,000 units, up 10.5 percent from September 2011 and down 9.5 percent from August 2012 (on an unadjusted basis)
The September 2012 forecast translates into a Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate ("SAAR") of 14.6 million new car sales, up from 13.1 million in September 2011 and up from 14.5 million in August 2012
Retail sales are up 7.9 percent compared to September 2011 and down 9.7 percent from August 2012
Fleet and rental sales are expected to make up 19.1 percent of total industry sales in September 2012
The industry average incentive spending per unit will be approximately $2,468 in September 2012, which represents an decrease of 6.7 percent from September 2011 and decrease of 1.2 percent from August 2012
Used car sales are estimated to be 3,415,790, up 5.8 percent from September 2011 and down 11.7 percent from August 2012. The ratio of new to used is estimated to be 1:3 for September 2012

"The SAAR range so far this year has been one of the tightest in the recent history, ranging in-between 13.8 and 15.1 million," said Jesse Toprak, Vice President of Market Intelligence at the site. "Even though the lack of big movements in car sales makes for less attractive headlines, the stable growth in sales is a positive for the industry. The stability allows for the right production adjustments and price optimization, resulting in improved profitability."

Forecasts for the top eight manufacturers for September 2012:

"Gas prices have continued their steady climb in September fueling unseasonably high sales of smaller cars while on the other end of the spectrum large trucks also performed well as small businesses have slowly started to come back to the marketplace," said Kristen Andersson, Senior Analyst at the site.