Road signs

What? Good news on SFTC? Yeah, thought I'd try something new today.

I was pleased indeed to see this New York Times graphic (who has time to read the whole article?), which revealed some promising data on U.S. auto sales.

Overall, April wasn't the greatest month for automakers -- sales declined for all seven of the top manufacturers.

But... the outlook for the environment was decidedly cheerier. Check out the table for sales of the most popular cars and trucks for April 2008 vs. April 2007. All of the vehicles that saw sales gains from last year were mid-size or smaller and, with one exception (Toyota Corolla), all of the cars with sales declines were full-size or trucks.

And the biggest uptick was for my beloved Prius! I was actually surprised to see that Toyota only sold 21,757 of them last month. I swear they must all be in the greater Los Angeles area.

Anyway, it's a sign that maybe we're not all complete idiots. Hooray for us.