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Published on Thursday, October 09, 2008
By LA Daily News Staff Writer
The deepening credit crisis will wreck what few sales prospects automakers had for the rest of this year, with J.D. Power and Associates slashing its retail car sales forecast Thursday and warning that next year will be even worse.
The downturn in auto sales threatens to close 700 car dealerships nationwide and 70 have already closed this year in California, auto industry officials said this week.
"This is a recovery that is going to take several years to work itself out," said Jeff Schuster, executive director of automotive forecasting at Westlake Village-based J.D. Power.
Power now forecasts 10.8 million new car and light-truck retail sales this year - down 16 percent from 2007 and a whopping 3.4 million sales from its July forecast.
Including fleet sales, Power expects sales to fall to 13.6 million units this year from 16.1 million in 2007. Fleet sales this year are now expected to fall to 2.8 million vehicles from 3.3 million sales last year
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