US car sales to fall to decade low

[TexasLawyer]

US car sales to fall to decade low
From correspondents in New York

November 28, 2006

AFTER a string of strong years, US car sales are slowing and an increasing number of forecasts say sales could fall next year to their lowest in nearly a decade, the Wall Street Journal reported overnight.

Slowing growth in the overall US economy and a slump in the housing industry, particularly in big markets such as California, come at a bad time for General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group, the newspaper said on its website.

IRN, a Michigan market researcher, forecasts US 2007 sales of 16.3 million light vehicles, or cars and trucks. That would be the lowest since 1998 and a drop of 300,000, or 1.8 per cent, from this year's expected sales of 16.6 million vehicles.

Some car makers are more optimistic, the paper says, with both GM and Toyota Motor forecasting 2007 industry sales of 16.5 million cars and trucks. But analysts at Bank of America, Wachovia Corp. and Citigroup expect a sharper decline, as does investor Wilbur Ross, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 18 months buying battered auto suppliers, the WSJ says.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20834428-23109,00.html

[Bozita]

1. Bank of America, Wachovia Corp. and Citigroup have a better grasp of credit worthiness ...

... than GM or Toyota.

I hope I'm wrong, but those look like storm clouds.

[gumby]

2. A society based on consumption can not sustain itself

at the levels the consumption promoters advertised.

[Katzenjammer]

3. This consumption-based society is killing us all.

And the elites, sick bastards, don't care. "More, more, more" is all they care about. They hope they'll be dead when the bill comes due.

[Anakin Skywalker]

7. "Raptured to Heaven" Is Their Hope.

[melm00se]

4. not overly surprising

cars have a long life cycle (7-10 years), the market is finite for new car purchases and the last several years have been pulling in people who were close to buying a new car. so the addressable market is smaller..

this is all part of a business cycle, in 4-6 years (assuming no radical change in technology which would accelerate this timeline) you will begin to see a spike up in car sales as the folks who bought during the last 2-3 years need to replace the cars that they bought.

[itsmesgd]

5. we've been told that comsumer confidence is sooo high

I guess "confidence" is high, but the people's ability to borrow more and more is not so much. Cars are at historical "lows" compared to past years, just as home interest rates were low in the past few years. Look around, everyone is mortgaged to the hilt. Like someone said, consumerism, not capitalism, is running rampant. Maybe if the fed would just print a few trillion more and drop it in bags from the sky, we'll all go out and buy more. When the realization hits that we are existing at "maximum debt" things will begin to turn bad- 1929 bad. Stock brokers will be raining from the sky once again.

Now's the time to begin to learn the skills of self-sufficienct living.

[MadMaddie]

6. I think you also have to consider people like me who are

buying used cars and paying with cash....no car payments, no interest payments no money in the pockets of the big car dealers....

There are a lot of people holding on to their money because they see the storm coming..

[AnneD]

13. MadMaddie

I think we are soul mates:loveya: After the downturn in 80's and I lost everything-I swore off new cars. I bought a 1K car and I upgraded to a 2K car recently. New cars may smell but used cars keep your wallet fat. Can't wait til these new cars depreciate.

[MadMaddie]

17. Exactly.....my car is just fine....

And I am at the point where I don't care what people think about my car.

:hi:

[Tight_rope]

21. You are so damn right...I will never buy new!

I use to work at a dealership when I was in school. And I can tell you that there is a reason manufacturers have those warranties. The first year of a new car is spend going back to the dealer to be fixed. They got to get all those damn little ticks out.

[Anakin Skywalker]

8. But Our Wise Godlike Leader Keeps Saying "The Economy is Strong!"

Now you aren't calling Him a liar, are you? You unbeliever!

[ckramer]

9. I have a solution for these three automakers

Start to make cars that is powerless (as vs. power everything) everything.

Make a simple car. Has only radio and air in it. That is it.

Stick shift. No power window, no ABS, no power roof, no lock, no power ...

I am amazed that I can't buy a car like that today any more even I can pay cash for it.

Sell it 7000 dollar a piece.

I hate to see these ugly $30,000 - 50,000 a piece of crap on car dealers' parking lot.

[Katzenjammer]

10. Even better: cyclecars. Everyone have a stable of cars suited to the task

Bike everywhere local, if possible. Ride a 50cc single-seater for longer distances (or 25cc using better technology for the body). Run heavy errands in a 75cc single-seater with a lockable freight compartment. Take your sweetie on a date in a 125cc 2-seater. Go on a family outing in a 175cc 4-seater. Removeable panels for summer (and winter, soon), to get the breeze. Maybe even make them modular, so that your 4-seater is really your 2 seater with a click-together semi-trailer (2 wheels of its own and maybe its own 50cc engine, but open communication between the front and back parts).

Or better, improve bike technology so that bikes would total out to maybe 5-10 lbs and could be clipped together to form larger multi-person units. Imagine being able to travel long distances on dedicated highways with camping places at frequent/scenic intervals, and hills and mountains made traversable by an on-demand ski-lift/cable-car sort of thing: grab hold of a grip on the cable and let the solar-powered motor pull you and your bike up the grade.

[trogdor]

12. That's nice, but we were talking about cars.

The parent topic was compact autos that were stripped down to, say, 1985 specs, and were priced accordingly. GM is not in the business of manufacturing bicycles.

I had a Dodge Omni. Not the greatest car on the market, but it was OK. The engine and transaxle were taken off the shelf from the K-car line. The rest of the car was designed in France by Simca. It was a little bigger than the VW Rabbit/Golf of the late 1970's. Our car, nicely equipped, sold for about $7000 in 1986 with the K-car motor (the standard was a Peugeot 1.7 liter piece of <i>merde</i>), AM radio, automatic transmission, and A/C. No power anything, including power steering. How can you build a car that doesn't need power steering, you might ask? Tires. Our car had 165 80R13 tires. Tall and skinny, thus requiring less steering effort. Try that with any subcompact made in the past decade or so.

The 2.2 liter K-car engine made 96 HP, if memory serves. This was PLENTY of power for an 80's car that size. The Golf GTI that year had 118. The Shelby GLH version of the Omni had 125. The current plane-Jane Toyota Corolla has 132; it could probably get along quite easily on the Yaris 1.5 liter and get at least 45 MPG, but conventional wisdom says people favor power over MPG, even at Toyota.

Incidentally, the base Yaris has hand-operated window cranks and non-powered door locks. It starts at around eleven grand.

[Katzenjammer]

15. "GM is not in the business of manufacturing bicycles."

And pretty soon they're not going to be in the business of manufacturing cars, either.

Cars used to be very simple and economical, more like enclosed motorcycles. But people in the US seem to have forgotten that, and the simplest thing some of them can think of is a Dodge Omni, which, like all modern cars, used most of its 100hp to move itself around.

That was the point of my posting.

[trogdor]

23. Tis true.

When I see news clips of I-5 with six lanes in each direction full of bumper to bumper traffic, I notice that all of these people are going to pretty much the same place, yet instead of using high-speed rail to get there, they're crawling at about 25 MPH on a superhighway built to sustain traffic at more-or-less unlimited speeds. I got stuck in an I-5 traffic jam while on vacation once; it's a stressful experience, to say the least.

Now, if I lived in southern California, you bet I'd make heavy use of my bicycle, but I live in a very rural area of upstate New York, where the sun might come out 100 days a year, and snow covers the ground from December to April. I drive around in a small car, but lots of people feel they have to drive SUVs because we get 100+ inches of snow a year, and I can't really blame them. Nevertheless, it would be nice if we all didn't have to get in our 3000 pound steel boxes every time we have to go someplace.

The solution is to start designing our cities and our transportation systems better. You don't hear New Yorkers complain about transportation, that is, unless they're driving, but who'd use a car as their primary transport in New York City anyway when you can get anywhere you want to go on the nice, clean electric subway? That's just nuts.

So sorry if I dissed you, but my point was, we don't all live in San Diego where bicycles are a viable form of transportation. If you want to take cars off the road, light rail is the way to go.

[The Anti-Neo Con]

11. That would be a good option.

I used to have a 1980 Toyota Celica that had power NOTHING & was a 5-speed. Less power options means less electrical crap to break.

That car was still running very well with 171,000 miles on it when some drunk woman in a large SUV plowed into it while I had it parked on the street. I miss that car.

[ckramer]

18. Absolutely.

I love simple cars.

My 1994 car is 'powerless' - stick shift plus air, radio/cassette. That's all I need from a car.

But when I look at the car market today, I can't replace my car with a new one that simple.

So I plan to drive my current one 'forever'.

[HughBeaumont]

24. My 1997 Cavalier is just that -

Stick, no AC, no stereo (it got stolen), no power anything (except steering).

222,000 miles later, it's still on the same engine and clutch, believe it or not. It's the Car the Landfill Forgot. The more frills you have, the less likely it is to hit the seven-to-ten year mark, if that's your intent.

Yet GM takes this and the EV1 off the market to sell waste mountains on wheels.

[benEzra]

20. Wouldn't be that cheap, I don't think...

power windows are probably as cheap to make and install as the hand-cranked kind, and are lighter. Cost of power locks is only a few dollars per car. Etc. The expensive things are the powertrain/emissions controls, the safety systems, and possibly HVAC, not the frills and accessories.

BTW, you can get a NICE used car for $7000.

If you work on your own cars, you can also save a bundle. If you have the tools, skills, and time, a factory shop manual for your car can be worth thousands of dollars in savings.

[Tight_rope]

22. WAIT..."NO POWER ROOF"?

Sorry I have to have a sunroof. It keeps me from having to use the A/C. I swear that's why my 1996 Mazda 626 is still going strong. I don't think I turn on the A/C more then 50 times in 8 years that I've had the car. And now I have a 2004 Honda Accord with a sunroof. I must have a sunroof. No sunroof - No buy.

By the way...I live in Houston...so you know how damn hot it gets down here. 1 degree from HELL on some days...2 degrees past Hell on others.

[KansDem]

14. So the big SUV buying spree of October fizzled?

As Gas Prices Decline, SUV Sales Increase
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
11/21/2006

Don Hammonds

Nov. 21--Consumers, possibly reassured by falling gasoline prices, returned to buying large sport- utility vehicles in a big way last month . But the impact of the October sales results should be tempered by the fact that the month is being compared with October 2005, which was far from typical.

A year ago, October was " coming off big employee discounts offered by car manufacturers that summer, Hurricane Katrina and $3 a gallon gasoline. All these were historic issues, so its tough to make comparisons," said Rebecca Lindland, associate director of the automotive group at Lexington, Mass.-based research firm Global Insight.

Nevertheless, a look at last month's sales results shows big gains for larger SUV models. Ford's all-new Expedition saw a 27.4 percent increase for October compared with the year-ago month . Cadillac's Escalade enjoyed a 136.2 percent increase and Chevy Suburban sales were up 63.7 percent.

APICS

Wasn't this touted in the Corporate Media in conjunction with the Bush economy? What happened (besides the election)?

[leftofthedial]

16. I can't afford a car

how can anyone other than war profiteers or amoral capitalists?

[ckramer]

19. The last five years, Japanese start to make ugly looking cars

I guess that's because they have used some American style design. Bad move. Honda (10 years ago) used to be beautiful. Not any more. So is Toyata. I hate these small ass look.

Ford passenger cars always look ugly.

So is Saturn.

GM cars are little better.

Only VW is consistant in its car image design but is too expensive.

My recommendation to US automakers - fire all current car exterior designers.

[Eurobabe]

25. Welcome to the 2007 recession! Courtesy of the GOP...

Greedy OIL Profiteers