Quarterly new vehicle registrations decline

Hawaii car and light-truck buyers have been putting the brakes on vehicle purchases with dealers facing the prospects that sales could decline for the first time since 2010.

New vehicle registrations dipped 0.2 percent in the second quarter and reached midyear with a 1.8 percent increase over the same point in 2015, according to a recently released report by the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association (HADA). The gain exceeds the U.S. market’s 0.6 percent rise over the same period.

“At this point it looks like the market could increase marginally or perhaps decline slightly this year and in 2017,” said Jeff Foltz, editor of Hawaii Auto Outlook, which produced the report using data from IHS Markit. “But the impact of the presidential election, fallout from Brexit, stagnant global economic growth and the aggressiveness with which manufacturers will ratchet up incentives are all wild cards for the new vehicle market. Core fundamentals are pointing to another good year for sales this year and in 2017, but it’s basically a coin flip to decide whether sales will inch higher or decline slightly.”

Foltz projects that new vehicle registrations will rise 0.9 percent this year to 57,600 from 57,094. That figure was revised lower from the 58,250 full-year forecast in Hawaii Auto Outlook’s August report.

The last year new vehicle registrations dipped was 2010, the last of five consecutive declining years after they peaked at 70,268 in 2005. New vehicle registrations have increased each year since 2011.

New vehicle registrations are a proxy for auto sales, but the two don’t always align because a vehicle buyer can make a purchase one month and register it in another month. The IHS Markit data are based on state Department of Motor Vehicles registrations.

There were 28,373 new vehicle registrations during the first six months of 2016, up from 27,863 in the year-earlier period.

In the April-June period, registrations decreased to 14,692 from 14,716.

While overall sales have slowed, Chevrolet was a runaway winner through the first half of the year among the state’s 15 top-selling brands with a 25.4 percent increase in new registrations. Overall, among types of vehicles through midyear, pickups gained the most in market share while small cars had the sharpest decline.

“The pickup market category was very robust,” HADA Executive Director Dave Rolf said. “The increase in Hawaii was more than double the increase experienced across the rest of the U.S. The pickup market was up sharply because gasoline prices obviously are down, and there’s also incentives on a lot of these pickup trucks.”

The light-trucks category, which includes vans, SUVs and pickups, remained popular among Hawaii drivers. The segment held a 59.3 percent market share through midyear with cars at 40.7 percent.

For automakers, Toyota was the leader in market share at 28 percent with its Tacoma and 4Runner the top sellers among all models registered statewide. Those models were followed by the Honda Civic, Honda CR-V, Toyota Corolla, Toyota RAV4, Ford F-Series, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Nissan Frontier.