US total vehicle sales, monthly
Monthly US total-vehicle-sales intelligence panel, 1976-01 onward: total vehicle sales (cars + light trucks, millions of units, seasonally adjusted annual rate; FRED TOTALSA, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, redistributed keyless via FRED fredgraph.csv). Carries 1-month and 12-month changes (levels and percents), the 3-month annualized percent change, and a contraction_flag marking months with fewer vehicles sold than a year earlier. Method caveats: BEA/FRED revise history with each vintage; the April-2020 COVID trough (8.919 million units) and the 2021 chip-shortage dip are genuine upstream prints kept verbatim. One row per month x USA; in-window nulls fail loudly, never imputed. Who joins this: auto dealers and parts/accessories merchants join demand on year_month + country_code and use sales_yoy_pct / contraction_flag as auto-demand features; subscription businesses use the 3-month momentum as big-ticket household demand pressure; sales teams weight auto-adjacent pipeline by the contraction regime.
- Rows
- 608
- Columns
- 12
- Source cadence
- Monthly
- Last refreshed
- Sep 30, 2026
- Theme
- economy
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| month_start | date | First day of the calendar month. (unit: date) |
| year_month | string | Calendar month as YYYY-MM (panel join key). (unit: string) |
| country | string | Country name (shared normalization layer). (unit: string) |
| country_code | string | ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (USA). (unit: string) |
| sales_millions_units | float | Total vehicle sales, cars + light trucks (FRED TOTALSA; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis). (unit: millions of units, SAAR) |
| sales_mom_millions | float | 1-month change in vehicle sales (null for the first panel month). (unit: millions of units) |
| sales_mom_pct | float | 1-month percent change in vehicle sales (null for the first panel month). (unit: percent) |
| sales_yoy_millions | float | 12-month change in vehicle sales (null for the first panel year). (unit: millions of units) |
| sales_yoy_pct | float | 12-month percent change in vehicle sales (null for the first panel year). (unit: percent) |
| sales_3m_ann_pct | float | 3-month annualized percent change in vehicle sales (null for the first 3 panel months). (unit: percent) |
| contraction_flag | integer | 1 when 12-month vehicle-sales growth is negative (fewer vehicles sold than a year earlier), else 0. (unit: flag) |
| row_hash | string | Deterministic 16-hex sha256 of year_month + the sales level (idempotency key). (unit: string) |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| month_start | year_month | country | country_code | sales_millions_units | sales_mom_millions | sales_mom_pct | sales_yoy_millions | sales_yoy_pct | sales_3m_ann_pct | contraction_flag | row_hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976-01-01 | 1976-01 | United States | USA | 12.814 | — | — | — | — | — | 0 | dc41a0c25c76e909 |
| 1976-02-01 | 1976-02 | United States | USA | 13.34 | 0.526 | 4.105 | — | — | — | 0 | ce43dcd1d1319e46 |
| 1976-03-01 | 1976-03 | United States | USA | 13.378 | 0.038 | 0.285 | — | — | — | 0 | f1dad7c320bc20a2 |
| 1976-04-01 | 1976-04 | United States | USA | 13.223 | -0.155 | -1.159 | — | — | 13.392 | 0 | 5406efe17ca9a941 |
| 1976-05-01 | 1976-05 | United States | USA | 12.962 | -0.261 | -1.974 | — | — | -10.862 | 0 | ae512b786e9146ff |
| 1976-06-01 | 1976-06 | United States | USA | 13.051 | 0.089 | 0.687 | — | — | -9.425 | 0 | b91fc3868f946223 |
| 1976-07-01 | 1976-07 | United States | USA | 13.466 | 0.415 | 3.18 | — | — | 7.556 | 0 | 380ce19a59f8b2c1 |
| 1976-08-01 | 1976-08 | United States | USA | 12.953 | -0.513 | -3.81 | — | — | -0.277 | 0 | 6a64458d21dd5a02 |
| 1976-09-01 | 1976-09 | United States | USA | 13.61 | 0.657 | 5.072 | — | — | 18.265 | 0 | fc2df7363d84290a |
| 1976-10-01 | 1976-10 | United States | USA | 12.823 | -0.787 | -5.783 | — | — | -17.775 | 0 | cffd5f9c4bc8a5b9 |
- Current
20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d · sha256 27f3f139f35d…
608 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_vehicle_sales_intel/us_total_vehicle_sales_monthly" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_vehicle_sales_intel/us_total_vehicle_sales_monthly").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_vehicle_sales_intel/us_total_vehicle_sales_monthly
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
US Vehicle-Sales Intelligence (FRED, keyless). (2026). US total vehicle sales, monthly [Data set, snapshot 20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d, sha256 27f3f139f35d]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-30, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_vehicle_sales_intel/us_total_vehicle_sales_monthly?snapshot=20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d
@misc{dz_fred_vehicle_sales_intel_us_total_vehicl_27f3f139,
title = {{US total vehicle sales, monthly}},
author = {{US Vehicle-Sales Intelligence (FRED, keyless)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_vehicle_sales_intel/us_total_vehicle_sales_monthly?snapshot=20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d}},
note = {Snapshot 20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d, sha256 27f3f139f35de1083fc0ce46f53796c4b48c6d0d3de7101809e656a50cd3fdc5; accessed 2026-09-30}
}Embed a table or a chart
Paste this into any page. The embed is pinned to the same snapshot, follows the reader's light or dark setting, and always shows the source, license and a link back.
<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=fred_vehicle_sales_intel%2Fus_total_vehicle_sales_monthly&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20260930T093558Z-27f3f139f35d&x=year_month&y=sales_millions_units&agg=avg" title="US total vehicle sales, monthly" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
Ask about this dataset. Answers come only from its catalog record, measured profile and change history, and list the facts they used.