Joining CBT Automotive News today to discuss how August’s up-swing to auto-sales, SAAR predictions and looming industry disrupters like Tariffs and interest rates is Jeremy Acevedo, Manager of Data Strategy of Edmunds.com.
Sales for August are projected to round out just shy of 1.5 million. This means we can add another good month of sales in 2018. Sales increased by 1% when compared to August 2017. As up is always a positive move, we do need to keep in mind that during last August, the industry was seeing the effects of Hurricane Harvey, nevertheless, this is August proved to be strong. The SAAR is on pace to meet 16.8 Million which is what was expected according to Jeremey. He goes on to explain how this keeps us on course to reach an end of the year SAAR that levels out right under 17 Million at 16.8.
August was not great across the board as we did see some headwinds. Incentives have peaked and are not growing as strongly as they did in the first half of the year. Also, data shows that inventories are down.
Automakers are in transition from being car heavy to being SUV focused. Most have found a rhythm and are no longer overproducing cars causing the lack of gross incentives on cars, which is very different from what we saw this time of year in 2017.
We also talk to Jeremy about the effects of higher interest rates and trade tariffs and how it doesn’t seem to be keeping buyers out of showrooms. As he notes it’s not something that we are seeing affect the industry much yet, he does believe interest rates approaching 6% might sway some shoppers, these two factors have not yet caused enough distribution to see how they could influence the market’s buyers.
To read more on how the forecast predicts a rise in new vehicle sale for august, visit out article here.
