BUSINESS

Austin consumers hit the gas on auto sales

Area sales surged 23 percent in July, industry report shows.

Lori Hawkins
lhawkins@statesman.com
Central Texas dealerships sold 12,876 new cars and trucks last month, according to Freeman Auto Report. That's a 23 percent jump from the same period a year ago. [AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF]

Austin-area consumers hit the accelerator on auto purchases in July, according to a new industry report.

Central Texas dealerships sold 12,876 new cars and trucks last month, according to Freeman Auto Report, a Dallas-based company that tracks auto sales in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet and Caldwell counties. That's a 23 percent jump from the same month a year ago, when dealers recorded 10,441 purchases.

The July performance also marks a 21 percent increase over June, which saw sales of 10,668 vehicles.

During the first seven months of the year, dealers sold a total of 71,989 new vehicles. That's essentially flat from the first seven months of 2018, when dealers made 72,304 sales, according to Freeman Auto Report.

Auto sales are considered a key indicator of an area's consumer confidence, as purchases of big-ticket items tend to indicate consumers aren't worried about their jobs or the state of the economy. Austin’s unemployment rate is currently 2.7 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. That's down from a year ago, when the metro area had a jobless rate of 3.2 percent.

Nationally, 1.38 million new vehicles were sold in July, which is a 0.5 percent increase from July 2018, but a 9.3 percent increase from June 2019, according to estimates by Edmunds.com.

Edmunds said July was expected to be the first month in 2019 to show a boost in monthly auto sales compared to 2018.

"A lot of people enjoy vacations and family time in July, so it's generally not a strong month for auto sales," said Jeremy Acevedo, Edmunds' senior manager of insights. "The extra day of selling makes things look a little better than they really are, and we still believe sales will continue to trend downward through the back half of the year."

Acevedo said dealers are starting to get more motivated to move aging inventory off their lots, which also augmented July sales.

"The model-year sell down is in full swing," Acevedo said. "We're seeing old cars lingering on dealer lots a bit longer than they should, which means that shoppers could see more attractive sales events as we head into the end of summer."

The best-selling brand in the Austin metro area in July was Chevrolet, which sold 1,050 cars and 938 trucks for a total of 1,988 vehicles, according to Freeman. (Car totals include sport utility vehicles.) That was followed by Ford with 1,744 total sales, Toyota with 1,376 sales, Honda with 1,151 sales and Nissan with 932 sales.