Hawaii car and light-truck registrations were flat in the second quarter, but the overall trend remained upward with new vehicle registrations poised to rise for the seventh year in a row.

“The healthy job market, strong consumer affordability and significant advances in new vehicle technology and safety features should keep sales strong,” wrote Jeff Foltz, editor of the Hawaii Auto Outlook, a quarterly report produced for the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association.

New vehicle registrations are forecast to increase 2.2 percent this year to 59,750 from 58,485 in 2016, according to the report due out today.

In the second quarter, registrations slipped 0.1 percent to 14,678 compared with 14,692 in the year-­earlier period. For the first six months, new vehicle registrations rose 5.1 percent to 29,816 from 28,373.

Bill van den Hurk, president of Aloha Auto Group, attributed the flat second quarter to the tax season and future tax uncertainty.

“In April people do their tax returns, and that normally slows us down a little bit,” said van den Hurk, who appears as the superhero Kia Man in advertisements for his dealerships.

“There’s a lot of people who are skeptical on whether we are going to have a new tax code and whether the president is going to get a tax change done,” van den Hurk said.

Still, Hawaii is outperforming the U.S., which saw registrations slip 0.6 percent during the first six months of the year.

“Our unemployment is at 2.7 percent, people are working and they’re buying vehicles,” van den Hurk said.

The light-trucks category, which includes vans, SUVs and pickups, continued to be the most popular in Hawaii with a 64 percent market share in the second quarter compared with 36 percent for cars.

Aloha Auto Group, which includes seven Kia dealerships and two Harley-Davidson dealerships, saw Kia registrations decline 5.3 percent in the second quarter but rise 1.4 percent through midyear. Van den Hurk attributed Kia’s mixed results to the popularity of light trucks in Hawaii.

“That’s where I believe the upswing is,” he said. “We don’t sell trucks at Kia, which is really dominating the market, but we sell SUVs and SUV sales are strong. A lot of people in Hawaii like trucks and SUVs. We’re running a shortage of certain models of SUVs.”

The largest increase in new vehicle registrations statewide came on Kauai where they jumped 22.9 percent. Oahu registrations rose 6 percent, Hawaii island registrations edged up 0.3 percent and Maui registrations slipped 1.1 percent.

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.

Toyota remained the market-share leader overall in Hawaii in the second quarter at 26.7 percent — about double the automaker’s share nationwide. Honda was second in Hawaii at 16.2 percent with Nissan third at 10 percent.

Hybrid and electric vehicle registrations in Hawaii represented about 6 percent of the total during the first half of the year.

Brands with the largest percentage increases in registrations during the first six months — among the top 25 brands — were Buick, Tesla, Infiniti, Chrysler and GMC.

The top 10-selling vehicles in the state during the first half of the year were the Toyota Tacoma, Toyota 4Runner, Honda CR-V, Honda Civic, Ford F-Series, Toyota RAV4, Toyota Corolla, Honda HR-V, Nissan Rogue and Toyota Camry.