US auto sales (black line) in April showed welcome improvement versus 2009, but were still a long way short of earlier demand levels.
They were up 19% versus April 2009. But even with this improvement, they were down by 24% by comparison with 2 years ago. On an annualised basis, they were only 11.2m versus 14.8m in April 2008.
And it seems that although companies continued to offer major incentives (an average $2800/sale in March), these had less impact in April. Analysts Edmunds.com, who monitor incentives, noted that “people are reining in their spending. We see the recovery as being very fragile“.