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Article: Clunkers cash makes July sales soar - relativelyCars pad lead.(NEWS)
- Article from:
- Automotive News
- Article date:
- August 10, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Crain Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: John K. Teahen Jr.
In July, a gleam of sunshine pierced the black clouds that have enshrouded car and truck sales for the past year. The gleam was called cash for clunkers.
Cash for clunkers prompted the best sales month of the year with 998,062 new vehicles sold. That was up 16.0 percent from June.
More sunshine: Sales of Ford's domestic brands were up 1.6 percent over last year; including Volvo, the company's gain was 2.4 percent. This was Ford's first year-to-year increase since November 2007.
But let's not get carried away. Industrywide, sales still dropped 12.2 percent below last year's relatively weak July total. And ...