BOTH AMERICANS AND THEIR CARS ARE GETTING OLD
Our cars are getting older, too: Average age now 10.8 years
From Associated Press
The cars and trucks in America’s driveways have reached a record old age, but there are signs that people are growing confident enough in the economy to want a whiff of that new-car scent.
The average age of the cars and trucks on U.S. roads hit a record 10.8 years as of July 1, 2011, as worries about job security the economy kept many people from making big-ticket purchases.
That’s up from 10.6 years in 2010, and it and continues a trend that dates to 1995, when the average age of a car was 8.4 years, according to the Polk research firm, which studied state vehicle registrations.
Polk said the average age of a car in the U.S. last year was 11.1 years, while the average truck was 10.4 years old.
But Polk Vice President Mark Seng says a rebound in sales last year and expected growth the next couple of years is likely to slow the aging trend. Polk has not predicted if or when the age will start to drop, but Seng doesn’t see that happening for two or three years, if not longer.
“It’s going to take the good economy several years of very high sales again, and people being willing to let go of those older vehicles that they’ve been holding onto,” Seng said.
Last year, auto sales rebounded a bit to 12.8 million from 11.6 million in 2010. They hit a 30-year low of 10.4 million in 2009. Polk expects sales around 13.7 million this year, rising by about 1 million per year through 2015, when they reach about 16 million. That’s back to what industry analysts used to consider normal, and approaches the U.S. sales peak of 17 million in 2005.
But even a 1 million-per-year sales increase would have little impact on the average vehicle age, because there are more than 240 million cars and trucks on the road in the U.S., Seng says.
The aging of the American auto fleet has been a boon to repair shops and companies that sell replacement auto parts, and Seng expects that to continue. He says people can hang onto their cars longer because automakers are making them far better than they did in 1995, first year that Polk began tracking the average age.
Polk also says the number of vehicles in the U.S. has been falling since 2008, but that trend reversed itself last year. In 2010, there were 240 million cars and trucks registered in the U.S. That grew to 240.5 million last year, the company said.
The aging vehicle trend and relatively slow sales have kept auto companies and parts makers from hiring new workers in great numbers, and that has helped keep unemployment relatively high. Last month, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% — still high, but the lowest in three years.
Government estimates show Americans spent roughly $40 billion more on new cars and trucks in 2011 than in 2009. Based on annualized figures from the first quarter of 2011, new-car spending totaled $206 billion, or 1.3% of gross domestic product, Commerce Department data show. That compares with $166 billion in 2009, about 1.2% of the country’s economy.
Dr. Pinna says:
I have been to many poor countries in South America where the cars are prehistoric! Since the population is too poor to buy new cars, they keep the old “heaps” going. They polish them and shine them and keep repairing day after day. I have seen cars that were over fifty years old in Cuba.
Today, when I drive through Florida, the streets are very empty, and there are extremely few new cars. The USA is rapidly becoming a poor South American country.
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