It's easy to blame American cars for the weaknesses of all things automotive. But, sometimes those cars are merely scapegoats.

Such is the case with car sales. It's been bandied causally about in the press that car sales are weak because the quality of cars is low. But, as Barry Ritholtz points out, that's simply not true. Aside from small-scale niche markets (such as Ferrari), the entire sector is in a slump. And he's got the charts to prove it.

Last week, we looked at the impact of the housing slowdown on various economic sectors. When we mentioned automobiles, one of the common responses was that it's GM/Ford specific, and Toyota was doing just fine in the U.S. The blame was that GM made lousy cars.

It turns out that glib answer was totally wrong. As the chart below shows, total car and light-truck sales fell 7.6%. This is an issue that is impacting just about ALL makes and manufacturers, not just GM. Even mighty Toyota sales dropped 4.3% in the U.S.

(Continue reading this story on Seeking Alpha)

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