September car sales in the US could fall back to the 30-year lows witnessed earlier this year, according to a new report by Reuters.

Transactions received a timely boost with the government's 'cash for clunkers' scheme, with 700,000 vehicles sold at the end of July and in the first three weeks of August.

Automakers who had previously announced production cuts as a result of the recession found their inventories slashed to historic lows as consumers rushed to showrooms.

But with the incentives now dried up and a lack of key vehicles at dealerships, some analysts are worried that September sales volumes could dip dramatically.

However, Rebecca Lindland, an Automotive Research Director at INHS Global Insight, suggested that activity began to pick up in the second half of the month after a slow start.

"We have started to get little rumblings that maybe the consumer isn't quite so flat on their back, that they have been responding to some of the incentive programmes and the fact that leasing is coming back," she told the news provider.

Despite her optimism, Ms Lindland also claimed that there will inevitably be a significant "hangover" from the scrappage scheme which could last until the end of the year.

Global Insight believes the seasonally-adjusted annualised auto sales rate for September in the US will be 9.33 million units, compared to 12.5 million at this time last year.

Reuters also conducted a study of 41 economists for their respective predictions, with JP Morgan forecasting a slump to 8.9 million vehicles - the lowest level since December 1981.

"We continue to believe [the monthly annualised rate] will hover around nine million through year-end, but we remain confident in a gradual recovery in the first half of 2010 given strong evidence of a bottoming pre-clunkers," Himanshu Patel, an analyst for the firm, told the news provider.

Meanwhile, respected auto industry forecaster Edmunds has revealed that it expects US sales to slump by 23 per cent across the board in September.

The group believes that the Detroit 'Big Three' - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - will incur declines of 46.1 per cent, 9.7 per cent and 48.7 per cent respectively.

In addition, it has suggested that Toyota will see a 9.7 per cent sales decrease, with Nissan suffering a 1.1 per cent drop and Ford recording a fall of 8.3 per cent.

Scrappage schemes have been introduced with great success in a number of countries, with the UK announcing this week that its version will be extended to cover an extra 100,000 vehicles.

Be sure to check back to Platinum Today for our September global auto sales update.


Source:

PREVIEW-US auto sales in September slump post-'clunkers' (28/09/09)

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