Early January Car Sales Hit 19-Year High

Domestic auto manufacturers reported that sales in the first 10 days of 1985 hit a 19-year high for the period, up an unexpectedly strong 12% from the year before.

Analysts said the strong performance indicates that the auto sales boom of the past two years still is not running out of steam. To some extent, they said, the early January results reflect pent-up demand that went unmet last fall because strikes at General Motors Corp. held down the supply of new cars. But they cautioned that 10-day results often show wide swings, and sales later in the month may not match the early January total.

Ted Sullivan, an economist at Data Resources Inc., a Lexington, Mass., forecasting firm, said the latest results indicate that new car supplies are now plentiful. “There is a greater availability and greater selection in dealer showrooms, and that can support a higher sales rate,” he said.

The six U.S. auto producers said they sold 190,869 cars in the Jan. 1-10 period this year, compared to 149,136 in the same period of 1984. The industry’s sales of 23,859 cars per day were the best early January since 1966, when a record 28,922 new cars were sold.

Year-to-year percentage changes are calculated based on the daily selling rate, not total sales for the period, because there were eight selling days in early January this year and seven last year.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the early January sales pace equaled an annual rate of 9.1 million cars. The annual rate is a calculation of a full year’s sales if the latest period’s selling pace continued for 12 months.

Analysts expect the annual rate to drop from that level, however. Although most now expect the industry to sell more cars in 1985 than the 7.95 million U.S.-built models sold in 1984, the domestic companies currently do not have the capacity to sustain sales at the early January rate.