• May 4, 2016

U.S. new car and light-truck sales returned to the fast lane in April, setting a monthly high that put Detroit automakers back on track to claim a record for 2016 profits and our Automotive MMI increased as well.

Industry volume hit 1.5 million vehicles last month, a 3.6% increase year-on-year, according to data provider Autodata Corp., for a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 17.4 million vehicles. That puts U.S. automakers on track for a second consecutive annual sales record.

Honda led major automakers with a 14.4% sales increase as both its cars and SUVs sold well, while Nissan‘s sales rose 12.8%. Fiat Chrysler was up 6% on record Jeep sales, andFord rode an April record for SUV sales to a 4% increase. Toyota sales rose 3.8% largely because of the RAV4 small SUV, which broke a monthly record with sales up nearly 32%.

Only General Motors and Volkswagen saw sales declines with GM blaming a 3.5% drop on a strategy of cutting low-profit sales to rental car companies. VW sales fell almost 10% as its emissions-cheating scandal continued.

The U.S. isn’t the only auto market on an upswing. European sales have been steadily rising for a few years and many of the markets in the Asia-Pacific region are growing, although at a more tepid pace than earlier this decade.

This month, we saw U.S. Steel file a section 337 case, alleging hacking and theft of intellectual property, against China. The suspected hacker stands accused of stealing the formula, production setup and even melting temperature for high-strength, automotive alloy Dual-Phase 980. U.S. Steel contends that the alloy showed up as a Baosteel product shortly after it was hacked.

While individual cases like this one are not likely to affect the fundamentals of the automotive steel market, it does illustrate just how coveted a market automotive has become for high-strength steel, even as aluminum has not been as widely adopted as many predicted it would be by now, after Ford became the first automaker to make the jump.