Small Car Market Is Taking Off
credit: dailyinvention
It’s no big surprise, but the statistics really do keep heading in this direction: Americans are buying smaller cars more often, presumably as a result of rising gas prices.
Ten years ago, buying SUVs was all the rage, and just one in every eight cars bought was a small car (technically speaking, a compact or subcompact car). These days, if you look at the April statistics, one in five new cars purchased was a small car, an increase of 7.5%. At the same time, the sales figures for SUVs and pickup trucks have fallen, and four cylinder cars have overtaken six cylinder cars as the most popular. Some of the most popular small cars being sold include the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Ford Focus and even Daimler’s various (and tiny) Smart models.
Apparently these kinds of trends have happened before, as a result of bad economic times or other periods of rising gas prices, but in the past, it was a short term situation and sales of larger vehicles always picked up again. But this time the experts are predicting that the move towards small cars is part of a lasting trend, with no sign that gas prices will ever fall again.
Tags: Cars | Ford Focus | Honda Fit | Saving Money | Toyota Yaris
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 3:30 am and is filed under Saving Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
