News Coverage
New Tax Laws And Rising Prices Likely To Squeeze Out Many New Car Shoppers
Sunday January 13, 2019
Forbes, Jan. 13, 2019 — On a frigid Sunday morning in downtown Detroit, economists from Cox Automotive threw icy cold water on consumers’ hopes of swinging a brand new vehicle this year. But don’t blame the messengers. They were simply reviewing for reporters how the combination of rising new vehicle prices and a change in federal tax withholding laws could simply put factory-fresh cars and trucks out of reach for many consumers, sending them to used car lots instead.
Let’s start with pricing. Expensive pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and crossovers ruled the market in 2018 and are likely to do so again this year. So much so, passenger cars accounted for less than 30% of the U.S. market, leading several automakers to all but abandon those lines.