Major automakers are reporting their sales numbers for the month of July Friday.
Here’s what we know so far.
Despite recall after recall and tons of bad press, General Motors had its best July sales since 2007 last month.
GM sold 256,160 cars in July, a 9% uptick from July 2013. Retail sales were only up 4%, though — perhaps a sign that those who buy cars for fleets have more faith in GM than individual customers. This is the ninth straight month of year-over-year sales growth for GM (GM), and an improvement from June when yearly growth was at around 1%.
As for the foreign brands, Japanese automaker Toyota (TM) said it sold 215,802 cars last month, an 11.6% increase over a year ago.
The Fusion, meanwhile, led the way for Ford, as the model’s record July helped the manufacturer post sales of 212,236 for the month, a 10 percent increase over 2013 and the best July for Ford in eight years.
Direct-to-consumer Sales for July were 162,028, a 7% increase over last year.
A record 23,942 Fusion units were sold, but that wasn’t the only Ford (F) model to see more sales than last year. Escape, Explorer and F-Series trucks were also up.
This is a welcome positive month for Ford, who saw year-over-year sales drop 5.8% in June.
Continuing a trend, Chrysler had another positive month of sales growth in July. The US car manufacturer sold 167,667 cars last month, a jump of 20% from the 140,102 units moved in July of 2013. This was Chrysler’s 52nd consecutive month of year-over-year sales growth and it’s best July since 2005.
The big month was driven largely by sales of Chrysler’s Jeep line, which posted its best July sales ever. Nearly 60,000 Jeeps were sold, an increase of 41% from 2013. Much of that growth came from the Dart model, which jumped 23%.
The most popular selling car for Chrysler last month was the Dodge Ram pickup, which moved 35,621 units.
So far this year, Chrysler has sold 13% more units than it did through this time in 2013.