AUTOMOTIVE INSIGHT: Will Market Drop Set Historic Record?
July 16th, 2008 at 7:45pm
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Car sales are in bad shape, but they’d have to get a lot worse to set a record.
In the last 50 years sales of new vehicles have gone through four major downturns. From 1955 to 1957 sales of new vehicles dropped 18 percent as the country went through a recession. During the oil embargo in the early 1970s sales dropped nearly 24 percent . But it was during the second oil crisis that sales dropped the most. They fell 31 percent from 1978 to 1982.
And the fourth big downturn was during the first Gulf War in 1991 when sales dropped nearly 17 percent . So even though sales are bad right now, the downturn is about the same as in 1991.
To match the second oil crisis, sales would have to drop to about 12 million units. And of course, the all-time worst downturn was during the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1932 car sales fell a staggering 75 percent.