August was a tough month for light duty vehicle sales; even Toyota and Honda felt the pinch, attributed to a variety of factors including the price of gas and hurricane Charley.

The chart to the left below plots the change in car and light duty truck sales for each of the top six vendors from the month of August 2003 to the month of August 2004. You’ll see only two standouts: Chrysler cars—primarily due to the ongoing phenomenal reception of the 300—and Nissan trucks. Even Ford’s strength in the F-Series trucks was not enough to give the company more than a meager 0.8% increase.

The monthly chart reflects the change based on the number of selling days (DSR). August 2004 had only 25 selling days compared to the 27 days in August 2003—the convention in the industry is to divide the total sales for the month by the number of selling days, and use that as the basis from which to calculate rate of change. The chart to the right, however, simply the reflects the total number of vehicles sold from January 1 through the end of August.

In that chart, you can see the where the momentum is for this year. Toyota clearly is having a great year, both in relative and in absolute terms. Nissan is coming on strong. Chrysler is fighting back hard. Ford and GM are in tough situations.

“Comparisons to our record sales of last year are tough,” said John Smith, GM’s group vice president for North American sales, service and marketing. “Still, our sales last month fell somewhat short of our expectations.”

Buried within all this data is a hard truth: although there was an absolute slowdown in sales for August 2004, there has been no relative withering away of demand for light duty trucks and SUVs. In fact, on an aggregate basis, overall consumer demand is even tipping slightly more in the direction of trucks.