Vehicle sales in the United States dropped 1.6 percent year-over-year in January to 17.16 million annualized units, according to the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU).
Sales will continue to be slow all year, NAFCU Research Assistant Yun Cohen predicts. This is because of tightening auto-loans standards and an expected interest rate increase, she said.
Car sales dropped from 6.1 million annualized units to 5.8 million annualized units while sales of light trucks fell from 11.8 million annualized units to 11.4 million annualized units.
“Sales continue to shift from passenger cars to light trucks,” Cohen said in the NAFCU report, Macro Data Flash. “The latter now represents a record high of 66.4 percent of the market.”
Last month, the market share of American vehicle brands was 42.6 percent, 1.6 percent less than December.
The sale of domestically assembled vehicles also dropped, from 78.1 percent to 77.8 percent.
Despite the slowing pace of sales, three of the six largest automakers saw sales increase compared to 2017 – Toyota by 16.8 percent from last year, Nissan by 10 percent and General Motors by 1.3 percent.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had the largest decrease at 12.8 percent. Ford Motor Corp. fell 6.3 percent and Honda dropped 1.7 percent.