The auto industry’s health is on the rise despite seven straight months of sale declines, experts say. And this is partly due to increasing consumer confidence and an improvement in the overall economy.
The average consumer is still flocking to the car dealership to browse used and new cars, generating auto finance leads with the need for auto loans (as only 36% of people purchase a car outright). Many analysts view the current trends as nothing more than an expected decline after many years of record success.
And just because it’s dwindling, doesn’t mean it’s stopping.
“We had a run of seven years of year-over-year growth,” said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Autotrader. “We’re still at a very high level of sales. The sky is not falling; the sales are not collapsing. Rather, car companies are making a deliberate decision not to sell at a discounted rate.”
The senior analyst noted that, in total, last year’s auto sales topped 17.5 million cars and trucks, compared to an average of 14.3 million for the two decades prior. That’s an amazingly high increase in auto sales.
And chances are some of them were subprime auto finance leads, especially amongst the younger generation. And if you deal primarily with subprime auto leads and are worried about how the market’s declining sales will affect your business, you can relax.
Several big automotive companies, including General Motors, said that they are decreasing their fleet sales because they wish to encourage long-term, stable, growth. They want to offer attractive lease deals to consumers, meaning that they still want to get their money’s worth, they’re just going about it differently.
This means that, while the auto sales are decreasing on a whole, the automotive industry isn’t falling apart because of it. It’s just moving in a slightly different direction to adapt. You can still get your subprime auto finance leads, but you might have to adapt with the industry too.
So just keep moving forward and generating leads for your business, the industry isn’t going anywhere. It’s just taking a small break before something new.
