State of Business: Cars & Confidence

"I look at these daily sales reports," said Ford Division Assistant General Manager Matthew McLaughlin, "and see 6,200, then 6,500 and 6,800 cars a day. So I begin to tell myself what a good sales executive I am. Then I look at the rest of the industry's sales and my ego is deflated. It's amazing. There hasn't been anything like it since 1955."

Actually, there has never been anything like it, period. In recent weeks, the U.S. auto industry has been speeding along at better than its record 1955 clip. October sales of...

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