Costa Mesa, California — Automotive retail sales in the US are likely to be 1.13m units in October 2019. This is a 2.9% rise compared with October 2018, according to consultants JD Power and LMC Automotive.
Thomas King. He is senior vice president of data and analytics at JD Power. He said demand for new vehicles remains robust in October.' He said that consumers were on average paying more for their vehicles than a year ago. This is because they are increasingly choosing more expensive trucks and SUVs.
These products account for more than 72% of sales in October, up 2.4%age points from last year. The market is suffering from ' record levels of old model-year inventory,' said the consultants.
Jeff Schuster is Americas operations and global vehicle forecasts at LMC automotive. Looking towards the end of the year he said sales are expected to be above 17m units 'for the fifth straight year. Attention is shifting to 2020 and, while retail sales are expected to decline for the fifth straight year, the outlook has improved somewhat.'
The consultants have increased their forecast for total automotive sales in 2019. It now stands at 17.1m units, 50,000 units higher than the last forecast in August, but still down 0.9% from 2018.
