In the past, the automotive industry has seen the decline of interest from the motoring public on sports utility vehicles and large trucks. Sedans and other small cars seem to be the favorite among motorists. The trend seems to point out that in vehicles, large is out and small is in.
This is evident in the prediction of Edmunds.com, one of the most trusted sources of automotive information, which stated that large and midsize car sales will decline this month and that compact cars are what consumers are opting for. The popularity of compact cars can be likened to the popularity of an system among Infiniti car owners.
The leading online source for automotive information predicts that new vehicle sales for this month will reach 1.209 million units. This is 3.9 percent lower than last year's number for the same period. But it is an improvement over the January sales figures by as much as 11.4 percent. Analysts from Edmunds.com said that the bestsellers this month are luxury SUVs and compact cars. They predicted that luxury SUV sales will be up by 17.8 percent over last year's figures, while for compact cars, the projected increase is 10.5 percent. They also stated that sales of large and medium-sized cars are slower than last year and that they expect the sales figure for large cars to drop by as much as 18.2 percent and 10.7 percent decrease for midsize cars.
The online automotive information source also predicted that the combined market share for the three big domestic car makers will rise up to 53 percent and this is actually higher than January's market share at just 51.8 percent. But the predicted combined market share of the Chrysler, Ford and General Motors is lower than last year's figure at 57.9 percent. This is the result of the pre-planned reduction in production and cutting down of sales to fleets.
For Chrysler, Edmunds.com predicted a 9.2 percent reduction from last year's sales figure for the same month. They predicted that Chrysler will sell as many as 173,000 units and this is 10.6 percent higher than their sales output last month. For the Ford Motor Company, Edmunds.com projected a sales figure of 184,000 units for this month. This is 23.1 percent lower than last year's sales for February. But it is a 14.2 percent improvement over January's sales figures. For General Motors which currently is the largest car manufacturer in the world, analysts predict a total sales figure of 284,000 vehicles. This is 4.9 percent lower than their output in February of 2006 but the numbers is surely an improvement of 15.7 percent over January.
Edmunds.com, along with those sales figures, also predicted the market share for each of the domestic car makers. For Chrysler, they predicted that the car manufacturer will have a 14.3 percent of the market share for this month. This is a reduction from February 2006's 15.1 percent share, and it is slightly lower than the January market share at 14.4 percent. For Ford, the sales figures predicted will give them 15.2 percent of the market for this month. This is a decrease over February of last year's 19 percent, but surely an improvement over January when they only got 14.8 percent of the market. For General Motors, Edmunds.com predicts a 23.5 percent share of the market for February 2007. This is slightly down from last year's 23.7 percent market share for February but an improvement over last month's 22.6 percent market share.
For the Asian car makers, Edmunds.com predicts an increase in the sales figures over both February of last year and last month's sales figures. Honda, Nissan, and Toyota combined are predicted to take 32.5 percent of the market.
