January is typically the worst selling month of the year and January 2010 will probably be no different.

The industry managed to move 698,900 vehicles in the first month of 2010, that compares well to the 656,976 moved in January of 2009. The 6% overall increase is even more impressive when you consider that last year’s January had two extra selling days.

According to Automotive News, at a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR) the industry is moving 10.5 million vehicles. That’s below December’s SAAR of 11.9 million, but December is usually one of the better months for sales.

January numbers were so promising that General Motors raised its expectations for 2010 to an 11.5 – 12.0 million SAAR rate. Other industry analysts are predicting 11 – 11.5 million cars sold for 2010.

Still the picture isn’t all rosy. Despite Toyota’s debacle, overall retail sales for the month were actually down 4%. The 158,100 fleet sales are the only thing that kept January sales in the black. The Detroit 3 still comprise more than ~65% of the fleet volume, yet only comprise ~38% of all retail sales.

General Motors: On the surface General Motors had a pretty good month. The automaker had 145,804 delivers, which was a 14.6% increase over January 09. In every vehicle segment General Motors was in the green. Truck vs. car sales stood at 59% to 41%, which was basically the same vehicle mix GM’s had for the past two years.

Big nameplate winners for the month included the Chevrolet Malibu (+76.5%), Chevrolet Cobalt (+149.7%), Buick Lacrosse (+185.2%), Chevrolet HHR (+220.7%) and Chevrolet Equinox (+76.1%).

When you see vehicles like the Cobalt and the HHR way up the first thing that should come to mind is fleet sales. GM sold 42,703 vehicles to fleets – that’s a 225% increase, according to Forbes.

Also concerning is the fact that the Malibu, now the third best selling family sedan, is the third slowest selling vehicles in America. It takes 71 days to move a Malibu off a dealer’s lot, according to Truecar. Industry wide average stood at 49 days in December.

Despite GM’s non-core brands (Saab, Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac) contributing virtually zero to the company’s market share, GM still managed to boost share by over one percent to land at 20.9%.

Ford: Ford had a good month, but almost all of the gain was attributable to fleet sales. In fact Ford’s retail sales were down -5%.

Ford sold 112,149 vehicles, a 24.4% increase. Of those sales, nearly 42,000 were fleet – a 154% increase over last year. More Ford’s went to government, commercial and rental fleets as a percentage of total sales than Ford’s main rivals, GM or Toyota.

According to automotive-fleet.com, Ford can take solace in the fact that its fleet sales are the good kind. A majority of Ford’s fleet sales are to commercial and government customers, ordering up Ford F-Series, Econoline vans, Fusions, Taurus, and Escapes.

Ford still has a pretty bad sales mix: 63% truck vs. 37% car sales. That’s not a good sign, considering gas prices have been on the rise for more than a year now.

Big nameplate winners for the month include Ford Taurus (+121.0%), Ford Crown Victoria (+91.0%), Mercury Grand Marquis (+111.9%), Ford Mustang (+61.2), Ford Fusion (+49.4%) and Ford Focus (+33.7%).

Ford ended the month with a 16.1% market share, usurping Toyota to become the second largest automaker in the United States.

Toyota: Last month was the single worst selling month for Toyota in 11 years, according to Edmunds. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should know that Toyota was hit hard by a bout of embarrassing recalls.

Toyota’s had a lot of this coming, but fortunately for the automaker the cessation of sales and production of eight of its most popular models came late in the month – only 4 days until the end of the sales count.

Toyota sold 98,796 vehicles this month, a -15.8% decrease from January 09. All of Toyota’s recalled models (except for the RAV4) posted negative numbers: Camry (-17.7%), Corolla/ Matrix (-3.6%), Avalon (-51.7%), Highlander (-15.7%), Sequoia (-56.2%) and Tundra (-40.2%).

Still, Toyota can’t blame the recall for all its woes. The Tundra, Sequoia and Avalon have consistently been poor sellers. Also, Toyota’s light truck sales performed worse than the rest of the industry (-23.7%).

On the bright side, RAV4 sales were up (+6.4%), and Lexus had a solid return of 15,517 vehicles (+14.2%).

What kills Toyota though is the slight percentage decreases in vehicles like the Camry and Corolla, which still make up the lion’s share of the automaker’s sales. The Camry – the top selling car of 2009 – fell to 7^th place in January, with only 15,792 Camrys sold.

Toyota has publicly stated it is not too concerned by the flagging sales numbers. Production will restart at the six affected car plants sometime next week. CTS Automotive, the part supplier who built the faulty pedals, is producing redesigned pedals that will go into those new vehicles.

Toyota ended the month with a 14.1% share, a 3.8% share drop, its lowest since 2006.

Honda: Honda sales were down -5.0 % from January 2009. With 67,479 vehicles sold, Honda managed to hold its position as the fourth largest automaker, but Nissan has moved dangerously close towards taking this position from Honda.

Since Honda sells very few vehicles to fleet operations, its sales numbers are actually in line with the retail industry average for the month.

The top three Honda models in sales for January were the Honda Accord (20,759 units), Honda Civic (14,693) and Honda CR-V (9,672). The Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Honda FCX Clarity and Acura MDX were the only Honda’s to post positive sales numbers for the month.

The Honda Accord is now the bestselling family sedan – though this has more to do with the Toyota Camry’s recall than anything Honda has done.

Honda ended the month with a 9.7% market share. Honda has actually lost more than a 1% of market share to rivals – that’s about the same share lost by Chrysler.

Nissan: Nissan moved 62,572 vehicles last month; a 16.1% increase from last year. With this good start, Nissan managed to move past Chrysler in becoming the fifth largest automaker in the US. Nissan managed to increase market share to 9%, their best market share ever.

According to Edmunds, some of Nissan’s improved position has to do with increased incentive spending. Nissan was the only automaker to increase incentive spending this month – to $2,455 per vehicle sold.

Nissan’s clear sales leader was the Nissan Altima, now the fourth bestselling vehicle in America. The Altima was less than 500 units away from beating the Honda Accord as the top selling American family sedan.

Nameplate winners include the Nissan Maxima (+51.8%), Nissan Armada (+97.8%), Nissan Sentra (+40.9%) and QX56 (+180%).

Infiniti moved 6,711vehicle, down 5.7% from the same month last year.

Chrysler: At the rate Chrysler has fallen I’m beginning to think there will come a time soon when I won’t even have to include them on the Mover’s and Shaker’s list. Chrysler sold 57,143 vehicles in January (down ~8%), helping it fall from fifth place to sixth place behind Nissan. Chrysler only beat Hyundai/ Kia by 4,517 units. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Hyundai Co. will probably be surpassing Chrysler in the next few months.

Some good news for Chrysler was that it slashed $1,230 off of incentive spending, according to Edmunds. Chrysler now spends the least on incentives out of any of the Detroit 3.

Big nameplate winners include the Chrysler Sebring (+85%), Jeep Compass (+52%), Dodge Journey (+55%), Dodge Avenger (+44%) and Dodge Caravan (+34%). The newly created Ram brand was 25% down. In fact, only one Chrysler vehicle was a top 20 nameplate for January – the Ram in 14^th place.

Analysts estimate fleet amounted to about 40% of Chrysler sales, the highest of any major automaker. Chrysler’s market share stood at 8.2% – a more than 1% drop in market share from last January.

Hyundai/ Kia: Hyundai, and its wholly-owned subsidiary Kia, had another good month. Hyundai Group moved 52, 626 vehicles, up 11.4% from January 2009. Hyundai increased market share by .5%, which now stands at 7.6%.

Interestingly, Kia barely posted positive numbers and actually lost market share in January. Kia’s poor truck sales are dragging the brand down. The Kia Sportage (-81%), Kia Sedona (-63%) and Kia Rondo (-78.5%) had terrible showings. Though, with 7,398 new Sorentos sold, Kia almost cracked the top 20 best selling nameplates – the closest Hyundai to do so.

Over at the Hyundai brand, the Accent (+61.9%), Elantra (+133%) and new 2011 Tuscon (+128%) showed dramatic growth. Sonata sales were pretty bad (-37%), but the legacy model is being sold down to make room for the 2011MY.

Hyundai/ Kia have a couple of slow selling models. According to Truecar, the 2010 Kia Forte and 2010 Hyundai Sonata are the 1^st and 2^nd slowest selling 2010 model year vehicles in the country. It takes 72 days to move a Forte, which is disconcerting because that’s a newly released model. The Kia Forte is Kia’s bestselling car.

For 2010, Hyundai plans on introducing a new Accent, Elantra, Sonata, Tuscon, Kia Sportage and a Kia large sedan.

If Hyundai keeps this sales pace up, expect it to surpass Nissan, Chrysler and maybe even Honda in 2010.

***Source: Sales data provided by the OEM. Market share/ vehicle segment analysis provided by www.motorintelligence.com via The Wall Street Journal ***

Images by: Andrew Walensa

Filed under: By the Numbers, Editorial