U.S. Auto Sales Down, But Many Media Buy Positive Spin

(MoneyWatch)  As much as automakers complain about their press coverage, car company spinmeisters should be high-fiving each other over today's optimistic headlines, despite yet another dreadful month of sales.

"Auto Sales for March Offer Hope," said The New York Times. "Auto Makers See a Ray of Hope," said The Wall Street Journal.

Based on those headlines, you might be surprised to know that according to AutoData Corp., GM sales were down 44.5 percent from the year-ago month. Chrysler sales fell 39.3 percent. Ford dropped 41.3 percent. Not only that, Toyota's U.S. sales fell 39 percent, Honda fell 36.3 percent, and Nissan fell 37.7 percent. To be fair, if you read far enough, the stories were less prone to optimism, as opposed to the headlines.

The origins of this positive spin are not hard to find. Chrysler, for instance, said in the headline of its March sales press release that its sales hit a "six-month high." That's based on the fact that Chrysler sales passed 100,000 units for the first time in six months. That's really stretching for some positive spin, since auto sales are usually measured against the year-ago month, or quarter or year. However, the line was dutifully picked up and repeated by many news outlets.

Only from inside the auto industry looking out could those numbers look encouraging. Even from that distorted point of view, what's encouraging about the numbers is that maybe, just maybe, they're as bad as they're going to get.

In other words, maybe sales are bottoming out. GM predicted recently that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of U.S. auto sales would hit bottom in the second quarter of 2009. According to AutoData, the SAAR for March was about 9.9 million, down from 15.1 million in the year-ago month.

In a blog last July, I likened Chrysler Vice Chairman and President Jim Press to Alfred E. Newman of Mad magazine (What, Me Worry?) and the late Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener in "Being There." At the time, on the brink of the present disaster, Press said Chrysler's deliveries to dealers were going "according to plan."

Chrysler's March sales report, attributes another Chance-like line to Press: "The market is starting to show small signs of life which need to be nourished like seedlings."

Of course, one way to nourish seedlings is to spread them with fertilizer. That could describe a lot of this month's positive spin.