Busy times for the repo man

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At least one segment of the beleaguered auto industry is booming — vehicle repossessions hit an all-time high in 2008.

Manheim, the vehicle auction giant, said a record 1.7 million cars and trucks were repossessed last year, up 12% from 2007, Automotive News reported.

Tom Webb, Manheim’s chief economist, expects another increase this year as layoffs mount and more car owners are unable to keep up with their payments.

“They will certainly be up in the first half of the year, and with the labor market deteriorating so substantially, it might be up quite a bit and might offset the decline I expect in the second half of the year,” Webb said in a conference call with analysts.

It was the latest sign that car buyers are under stress. On Monday, automakers said new-vehicle sales plunged 18% in the U.S. last year compared with 2007. Tight credit and worries among consumers about job security were prime reasons for the falloff.

Those factors, combined with bloated inventories of unsold vehicles, have pushed down used-car prices. Manheim said its Used Vehicle Value Index stood at 98 last month. That was down from 110.2 a year earlier and was the biggest annual decline since Manheim started the index in 1995.

Wholesale prices of SUVs and pickup trucks, which plummeted during last summer’s gasoline crisis, firmed up toward the end of the year as pump prices retreated, Manheim reported, while wholesale prices for compact cars declined from last summer’s levels.

-- Martin Zimmerman