Archive for the ‘sales’ Category

Attention, shoppers: new cars are more affordable today than they've been in over five years. According to Comerica Bank's Auto Affordability Index, it now takes the average family 21.9 weeks of income to pay off an average-priced vehicle. Sadly, that's not because household income has risen, but because the average cost of a light vehicle has dropped to $25,500. Comerica's data comes from the third quarter of 2009, which of course included Cash-for-Clunkers; however, while analysts say that C4C did impact prices, auto affordability had been improving long before the federal program kicked in. Customers are now paying less for vehicles than...

It's obvious from the comments on this site and others in the High Gear Media family that Cash-for-Clunkers remains a hot-button issue, and new data about the program is likely to fuel the fire: according to stats from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, most car buyers used Cash-for-Clunkers to swap out their domestic ride (frequently a Ford Explorer or F-150) for a foreign model. The notable exception: Michigan, where over 81% of Cash-for-Clunkers trade-ins went toward the purchase of a domestic automobile. Other states along the Rust Belt leaned slightly in Detroit's direction, but on the whole, 57% of Americans ditched...

Based on simple production stats, Volkswagen is now the world's largest automaker. Over the first nine months of 2009, VW produced 4.4 million units, while Toyota cranked out 4 million even. (Ford came in third at 3.7 million.) We're not sure how long VW will remain at the top of the heap, since much of its production and sales have been driven by government-run incentive programs in Europe, and many those programs have now ended. But even if the company's victory is fleeting, VW can technically say that it achieved its goal of becoming the world's largest automaker nearly ten years ahead of its stated 2018 deadline. [AutoCar]