{"id":158826,"date":"2021-01-27T08:50:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T13:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=158826"},"modified":"2021-01-27T10:41:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T15:41:31","slug":"new-vehicle-sales-slowed-in-january-despite-improved-retail-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2021\/01\/new-vehicle-sales-slowed-in-january-despite-improved-retail-results\/","title":{"rendered":"New Vehicle Sales Slowed in January Despite Improved Retail Results"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Depressed fleet sales are putting a drag on January’s results, offsetting improved retail results.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Depressed fleet demand continues to hobble the overall demand for new vehicles, leaving the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales in January 5.5% behind year ago levels, according to new estimates by analysts.<\/p>\n

Conversely January retail sales are expected to increase slightly, according to TrueCar. U.S. retail deliveries of new cars and light trucks are forecast to see an increase of 0.4% from a year ago when adjusted for the same number of selling days. However, that increase isn\u2019t going to be enough to offset the impact of the depressed fleet market.<\/p>\n

TrueCar, the car-buying help service, expects\u00a0the total SAAR to drop to an annual rate of 15.9 million units from 16.8 million units in January 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic sent the car business into a tailspin.<\/p>\n

(New year brings new deals on new cars, trucks and utes.)<\/a><\/u><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cConsumer activity has kept the vehicle market on a strong recovery path in recent months. Retail sales, which generally account for four-out-of-five vehicles sold in the U.S. market, are expected to remain strong in January,\u201d noted a report from Cox Automotive.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cox report said positive economic news, coupled with improving consumer confidence, is helping rebuild both interest and ability to buy.<\/p>\n

“Entering 2021 with retail sales in line with last year is a big win for the automotive industry,” said\u00a0Nick Woolard, lead industry analyst at\u00a0TrueCar.<\/p>\n

“However, while retail sales have rebounded, rental fleets remained depressed and continue to interrupt fleet sales. As a result, fleet sales are struggling to come back to pre-pandemic levels and are driving total unit sales down,” Woolard said.<\/p>\n

In addition,\u00a0the average transaction prices for new vehicles are projected to be up 4.2%, or\u00a0$1,509, from a year ago but down 4.5%, or\u00a0$1,759,\u00a0from\u00a0December 2020.\u00a0TrueCar\u00a0projects that\u00a0U.S.\u00a0revenue from new vehicle sales will reach approximately\u00a0$39 billion\u00a0for\u00a0January 2021, down 4.4%\u00a0from a year ago.<\/p>\n

(Despite production cuts due to chip shortages\u00a0vehicle inventory remains stable.)<\/a><\/u><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

“The automotive industry continues to reap the benefits of continued strength in retail demand with lower incentive spend.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Improved consumer confidence and other factors continue point to continued retail sales strength.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cA handful of brands such as Ford, Genesis, GMC, Ram and Toyota, appear to be in the coveted quadrant of both retail growth as well as incentive decline. This is mostly driven by new product and being in the right segments or a combination of the two,” added Woolard.<\/p>\n

Woolard said average transaction prices have finally come down from the record-setting highs we saw last month but are still higher than this time last year.\u00a0Of the top carmakers, only Kia has an average transaction price below\u00a0$30,000, TrueCar reported.<\/p>\n

Alain Nana-Sinkam, vice president of\u00a0Industry Insights\u00a0at TrueCar, said the trend is most likely to continue so buyers are going to adjust their buying process in response.<\/p>\n

“As new vehicle prices rise, we may see more price-conscious shoppers gravitate back towards smaller segments or the used car market due to growing concerns around affordability.”<\/p>\n

(Auto sales gain traction as Americans avoid mass transit.)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Fleet sales for\u00a0January 2021\u00a0are expected to be down 23.7% from a year ago but used vehicle sales for\u00a0January 2021, which are critical for setting the price of leases on new vehicles,\u00a0are expected to reach 3.2 million, up 1% from a year ago and up 10% from\u00a0December 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Depressed fleet demand continues to hobble the overall demand for new vehicles, leaving the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales in January 5.5% behind year ago levels, analysts note. This is despite gains in retail auto sales, TheDetroitBureau.com reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20009,"featured_media":134922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[118,140,298,150,151,133,131,132,129,125,124,139,148,128,278,288],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158826"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=158826"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=158826"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=158826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}