A senior analyst for J.D. Power and Associates said Tuesday that U.S. demand for new vehicles should continue to slowly rise over the next few years as aging vehicles are replaced and new car buyers enter the market.
Jeff Schuster, J.D. Power's executive director of global forecasting and analysis, said the he still expects U.S. vehicle sales to total 12.6 million this year, but annual sales could reach as high as 16.5 million by 2015, a level the industry hasn't seen since 2006.
But he cautioned that since the recession hit, many potential buyers have opted to keep the vehicles they already own longer, instead of getting new ones. While that could change, it also could be a sign of a permanent shift in American buying habits.
Speaking to analysts at the Standard & Poor's Auto Industry Hot Topics Conference in New York, Schuster said that September's better-than-expected sales suggest that there may be some pent up demand among consumers for cars and trucks.
U.S. vehicle sales rose 10 percent from last September, according to Autodata Corp. September saw the fastest sales pace since April and automakers expect that pace to stay steady for the rest of this year.
The increase came despite another month of sales drops at some of the Japanese automakers, including a 17.5 percent drop at Toyota, which is still dealing with inventory problems stemming from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Schuster said low dealer inventories, or just the perception that they are low, sent some previous Toyota buyers to competitors and kept others from shopping entirely.
According to J.D. Power figures, Toyota's U.S. market share has fallen 2.5 percentage points from its year-ago level to 12.7 percent. And it's unclear how much of that it will be able to win back, Schuster said.
"This disaster created a more open environment coming out of the recession," he said. "I think buyers are more open to looking at other brands now."
At the same time, other automakers have been able to increase their shares of the U.S. sales pie. Schuster pointed to Chrysler LLC, which has boosted its market share by 1.1 percentage points to 10.4 percent in the past year.
"They're in a much stronger position than we thought they would be at this point, ahead of an influx of new vehicles over the next few years," he said.