The banks need to loosen up. That’s the message from a month’s worth of interviews with consumers and automobile dealers nationwide. It’s also the conclusion of a new study by Accenture, a global management consulting company.
The banks need to be less stingy with credit. That would do as much to help the struggling automobile industry as the latest government bailout. Tight credit is strangling the industry, putting automobile suppliers, dealers and consumers at risk.
That includes showrooms supplied by Chrysler, which is reorganizing its operations under the protection of a federal bankruptcy court in New York.
Accenture has done two online surveys of 504 automotive consumers in the United States — the first conducted in October 2008 and the most recent conducted in April of this year. The surveys found that more than half of the respondents — 64 per cent, to be precise — ran into credit problems buying a car.
For 34 per cent, those credit difficulties meant no new-car purchase. For 30 per cent, weakened credit meant rolling off the sales lot in something less than the dream machine they intended to buy, according to the Accenture survey.
Motorists in the United States are now holding onto their cars 9.4 years, up from 9.2 years in 2006, 8.3 in 2000 and 7.9 in 1996, according to figures compiled by Michigan-based R.L. Polk, a global automotive marketing research firm. A credit thaw right about now would be a very good thing.
But, on another note, more favorable credit would not necessarily boost the sales of more fuel-efficient cars. The Accenture survey supports the conventional wisdom that consumers in America have short memories. They seem to have forgotten the gasoline prices of the summer of 2008, when it seemed that we were moving toward $5 a gallon for regular unleaded.
With prices now around $2 a gallon for regular unleaded, dealers nationwide have been reporting decreased demand for fuel-efficient cars and increased demand for trucks and larger automobiles. The Accenture survey buttresses those anecdotal retail reports.
Although fuel-efficiency remains the top reason for selecting a new vehicle, it has declined in importance among survey respondents. Thirty-eight per cent of the people in Accenture’s April 2009 survey cited fuel-economy as a determinant in their purchase decision, compared with 51 per cent who cited fuel economy in 2008.
Perhaps that means a credit thaw and a continued freeze on federal fuel taxes and other fuel prices would be the perfect combination to get the automobile industry moving again.
The banks need to be less stingy with credit. That would do as much to help the struggling automobile industry as the latest government bailout. Tight credit is strangling the industry, putting automobile suppliers, dealers and consumers at risk.
That includes showrooms supplied by Chrysler, which is reorganizing its operations under the protection of a federal bankruptcy court in New York.
Accenture has done two online surveys of 504 automotive consumers in the United States — the first conducted in October 2008 and the most recent conducted in April of this year. The surveys found that more than half of the respondents — 64 per cent, to be precise — ran into credit problems buying a car.
For 34 per cent, those credit difficulties meant no new-car purchase. For 30 per cent, weakened credit meant rolling off the sales lot in something less than the dream machine they intended to buy, according to the Accenture survey.
Motorists in the United States are now holding onto their cars 9.4 years, up from 9.2 years in 2006, 8.3 in 2000 and 7.9 in 1996, according to figures compiled by Michigan-based R.L. Polk, a global automotive marketing research firm. A credit thaw right about now would be a very good thing.
But, on another note, more favorable credit would not necessarily boost the sales of more fuel-efficient cars. The Accenture survey supports the conventional wisdom that consumers in America have short memories. They seem to have forgotten the gasoline prices of the summer of 2008, when it seemed that we were moving toward $5 a gallon for regular unleaded.
With prices now around $2 a gallon for regular unleaded, dealers nationwide have been reporting decreased demand for fuel-efficient cars and increased demand for trucks and larger automobiles. The Accenture survey buttresses those anecdotal retail reports.
Although fuel-efficiency remains the top reason for selecting a new vehicle, it has declined in importance among survey respondents. Thirty-eight per cent of the people in Accenture’s April 2009 survey cited fuel-economy as a determinant in their purchase decision, compared with 51 per cent who cited fuel economy in 2008.
Perhaps that means a credit thaw and a continued freeze on federal fuel taxes and other fuel prices would be the perfect combination to get the automobile industry moving again.
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