Encouraging economic indicator?
Posted Jun 5, 2012 2:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was a banner month for auto sales in the month of May.
Analysts with the Canadian Auto Dealers say numbers were up more than 18 per cent over the same month last year.
That increases overall sales for 2012 by 8 per cent for the calendar year.
“Obviously there’s always, you know, many factors that drive car sales,” CAD Senior Economist Michael Hatch tells 660News. “The biggest one is definitely affordability. Average prices have been coming down and this is a trend that we have observed for, you know, the better part of the past 20 years. But it really continues to be the case and consumers are responding.”
“If we stay on this pace,” Hatch continues, “we’re going to see much more than the two or three per cent growth that we saw last year. Closer to 6, 7, 8 or 9 per cent which will bring us up to 1.7 million units sold for the year which would be close to an all-time record.”
Hatch adds that incentives have played a major role in the sales spike.
“That sort of hit a peak, you know, a couple of years ago when things were really, really challenging for the industry and the economy in general in 2008, ’09 and 2010 to a lesser extent,” he says.
Hatch says the average car rolling off the production line now is lasting longer, allowing vehicles to be traded more often.
