Today is the first of the month, a date that is significant for two reasons: it's the day Jalopnik writers blow their paychecks on sway bars and more skinny jeans, and it's the day automakers report their sales figures from the prior month. And July wasn't a good look for Volkswagen in the U.S.

As this morning, Volkswagen's U.S. sales were down 14.6 percent from a year earlier. That sucks. But what really sucks is the fact that Volkswagen Golf sales were down a whopping 44 percent.

An all-new just came out. Does that mean it's a dismal failure right at launch?

One of the Germans summoned to San Francisco for the U.S. launch of the 2015 Volkswagen Golf – the…

Not at all. The problem is that there aren't enough 2015 Golfs on dealer lots yet, and people are waiting for them. That's why Golf sales tanked in July. A search on Cars.com reveals just 889 2015 Golfs on dealer lots at the moment in the U.S. Buyers are probably holding off until the new ones come in.

"People that want a Golf/GTI want the best one," our car buying expert Tom McParland said about the situation. "They will know about a major upgrade coming." That's in contrast to buyers of other cars — like maybe a Honda Civic or a Chevrolet Cruze — who probably are just going to go for the best deal.

Here's the interesting news: according to , sales of the new GTI model specifically shot up 39.4 percent last month, so when there are GTIs on dealer lots people are snatching them up pretty quickly.

The newspaper predicts that once more Golfs are available, including the new Golf SportWagen that used to be badged as a Jetta in the U.S., the line will see a sales rebound.

In the meantime, people are pretty excited about the new GTI. That makes sense. .

As a young person who isn't the scion of a wealthy energy drink family and didn't invent Snapchat,…