USA Auto Woes
If you want some honesty about how the USA are doing then watching a news channel like Al Jazeera can often tell you how it is. Here is a surprisingly balanced view of how the USA car industry looks at the moment. Obama has recently set the scene in the motor industry with the message “build fuel efficient cars”. The message is that everyone benefits, the consumer benefits form less fuel costs, the country benefits from less money going overseas to buy fuel.
However this still will add an average of $1300 to the purchase price of a new car at a time where currently new car sales are at there lowest for generations. Manufacturers like Dodge are filling for bankruptcy that is affecting the local dealer that has to try and shift vehicles no one wants to buy from a closed car manufacturer.
For those who can hold on there has to be a silver lining. There is only a certain period that the USA can regurgitate used cars and at some point new cars have to be added to the system. As usual this will probably happen in an aggressive style, but when this upturn will occur nobody knows. Europe has stated scrappage scheme where they reward the consumer for scrapping an old car and buying a new one, by up to £2000. There is no word that the USA is considering the same, with a decline in USA model sales anyway prior to the recession as Japanese and German manufacturers lead the way in fuel economy development.