J.D. Power: September New-Car Sales Weaker than Expected, but Still Likely to Beat August

Although there has been some slowdown in the last week of September from the rapid new-vehicle retail sales that opened the month — leading to what’s projected to be a softer-than-predicted seasonally adjusted annualized rate — the market is becoming healthier and still making strides, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

Specifically, the SAAR for new-vehicle retail sales will likely be 9.4 million units for September, the company said. J.D. Power had predicted earlier that the SAAR would hit 9.7 million for the month.

With fleet sales added in, the September SAAR will likely be about 11.5 million units, J.D. Power noted, saying that 20 percent of that total would be fleet.

J.D. Power had previously predicted that there would be a total SAAR of 11.8 million.

Despite the softening from what J.D. Power had expected earlier, both the revised retail and total SAAR for September are improvements over August.

That month saw a retail SAAR of 8.4 million units and a total SAAR of 11.4 million units.

Furthermore, September’s retail and total SAAR expectations are stronger than year-ago levels (retail: 7.2 million units, total: 9.2 million), which was the month that followed the end of CARS.

“Consumers continue to grapple with high unemployment levels, a weak housing market and higher vehicle prices,” explained Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power.

“However, even with the weaker-than-expected close to September, retail volume has improved from recent levels and the recovery continues to progress slowly,” he added.