STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 7 December 2012

[Demeter]

10. U.S. auto sales zoom in the wake of Superstorm Sandy THAT'S ALL RIGHT, THEN

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autos-auto-sales-20121204,0,2696209.story

Americans buy more than 1.1 million vehicles in November, up 15% from a year earlier and the highest pace since January 2008. Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and BMW have their best Novembers ever.

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With the presidential election and Superstorm Sandy behind them, car shoppers headed for dealer lots last month in the biggest numbers since early 2008... The import nameplates generally reported stronger gains than the domestic brands, helped by new products such as the new-generation Honda Accord and a new Nissan Pathfinder sport utility vehicle...Bolstered by shoppers replacing some of the 250,000 vehicles estimated to have been destroyed by Sandy, that translated into a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 15.5 million, the highest since January 2008, according to industry research firm Autodata Corp.

Consumers leaned toward fuel-efficient cars and small SUVs. With gas prices around $3.50 a gallon in much of the nation, and even higher in car-crazy California, sales of hybrid vehicles also appear to be taking off. Led by its hot-selling Prius line of hybrids, Toyota Motor Corp. posted November hybrid vehicle sales of 24,682 in the U.S., a 29% increase over the same month last year. But for the first time since it started selling hybrids in the U.S. in 2000, Toyota has serious competition in the hybrid market.

Ford Motor Co. said it sold nearly 5,000 of its new C-Max hybrid in November, up about 50% from the car's first full month of sales in October. Combined with its other offerings, the automaker sold about 6,500 hybrids in November, its best month ever for those vehicles, which use both gas and electric motors to increase fuel efficiency. Ford has sold 9,000 of the C-Max models since they first went on sale a little more than two months ago. That amounts to about a quarter of the hybrid volume the automaker sold in all of 2011 and underscores how important the vehicle is to Ford's hybrid strategy. If C-Max sales keep on pace, the automaker will easily double its hybrid sales in the current model year.

Certainly hybrids are starting to catch on with consumers. Sales of hybrids by Toyota and Ford and General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Volt — technically a plug-in hybrid that runs on gasoline once its electric battery charge runs out — were nearly 35,000 last month, up about 40% from November 2011. Sales of hybrids and plug-in electric cars are expected to top 500,000 in the U.S. for the first time both in this calendar year and in the 2013 model year, said Alan Baum of the Baum & Associates research firm. That would be about 3.5% of the U.S. auto market....About a quarter of Ford's C-Max sales are in California, a market dominated by Toyota, especially in the hybrid market...