Those are some pretty impressive auto sales figures emerging from November and Black Friday! So did we do something special this holiday season or was this a one-hit-wonder?

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Black Friday sales were good for GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota as auto sales rise in November, and again, anticipated this December.

“The Thanksgiving weekend saw a lot of promotion by automakers, riding the Black Friday wave, and it seems to have paid off,” said Michelle Krebs, an analyst with auto information company Edmunds.com.

Ford offered a pre-paid MasterCard of up to $1,000 to use for holiday shopping. Mazda will donate $100 to one of four charities for every new Mazda that sells through Jan. 2, 2014. Chevrolet was marking down new car prices and offering cash back deals for Black Friday.

Sterling McCall Toyota in Houston held its annual “Slicer Sale” , which attracts mobs and TV crews as it promises three vehicles for sale at just $1.
At Berger Chevrolet in Grand Rapids, anyone who arrived before 9 a.m. was eligible for a $2,000 door-buster coupon.

The challenge has alway been, and will continue to be, how to draw consumers into car showrooms on one of the busiest shopping days of the year?

And now that the deal season is even expanding from Black Friday, to Cyber Monday, to the entire month of December, does this help or hurt auto dealers compete for the holiday shopping dollars?

With respect to Black Friday, shoppers and sales are down.

it was anticipated that 140 million were out shopping over the holiday weekend, a decline from the 147 million who planned to do so last year, according to the National Retail Federation. The trade group said that nearly a quarter of the people it surveyed planned to shop on Thanksgiving Day. Shopper traffic on Black Friday fell 11.4 percent from 2012 and sales dropped 13.2 percent.

ShopperTrak claimed that retailers opening on Thanksgiving affected the Black Friday sales, something the auto industry as a whole, did not participate in, but may next year?

That said, Automotive News reported that Black Friday incentives drove auto sales the strongest volumes since 2007. “Industry sales in November picked up after Thanksgiving, contributing to the best sales pace of the year,” said Bill Fay, Toyota Division general manager. Overall sales were up nearly 9 percent compared to November of last year, according to final figures from Autodata.

So is the widening of Black Friday better for auto dealers or has the elastic market finally start to snap back this holiday season?

With what we learned this holiday season, how should auto dealers better compete with sale day expansion next year?

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