JD Power-LMC is forecasting that the US light vehicle market will see only a relatively modest decline in 2003 to 16.4 million units – a decrease of 2.4% on 2002’s 16.8 million unit market, writes just-auto.com editor David Leggett.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
At a conference in Frankfurt, JD Power-LMC forecaster Bob Schnorbus said that the US light vehicle market continued to be supported by record incentives.
Schnorbus said: “16.4 million units is a pretty good market when you consider that it was not that long ago that 15 million units was considered about as good as it could be.”
Schnorbus pointed out that the latest wave of record incentives suggests that the US light vehicle market is running at 17-18 million units annualised rate this month.
His analysis also indicated that incentives in the US could exceed $US2,000 on average per vehicle sold by the end of the year but that translates to over $4,000 per unit sold for General Motors while, at the other end of the scale, a manufacturer like Honda is offering no incentives.
He also mentioned that war in Iraq had resulted in a smaller adverse impact on the US light vehicle market than many had expected.
