New-car filings in state saw 23% skid

LITTLE ROCK — New-vehicle registrations dropped 23 percent in Arkansas in July from a year earlier as the government's "cash for clunkers" program had just gotten under way by the end of the month, according to a research firm.

Almost 6,650 vehicles were registered in July, down from about 8,675 in July last year, said Cross-Sell of Lexington, Ky., a 20-year-old firm that provides market analysis on auto registrations in 27 states.

Few of the titles were because of the government's cash for clunkers program, which began July 27 and ended Monday.

The decline in registrations was expected, said Jeff Collins, an economist with Streetsmart Data Services near Fayetteville.

"The cash for clunkers program was being batted about [in July]," Collins said. "If you were a potential buyer and you thought there was going to be an opportunity to save some money if you just waited, you would be more than willing to do that."

The economic downturn also contributed to the decline in registrations, Collins said.

There were about 700,000 vehicles sold in the country under the cash for clunkers program. It is uncertain how many of those vehicles were sold in Arkansas, said Dennis Jungmeyer, president of the Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association.

But there still should be many potential buyers, Jungmeyer said.

"What we've seen in Arkansas that there were a lot of trucks used primarily on the farm and people with older cars bringing them in [for the government program]," Jungmeyer said. "Those were people who would not normally be in the market anyway. To some extent, I think there are still people out there who will buy when the inventories get back up."

Registrations in August, which will include the cash for clunkers transactions, are likely to be improved over August of last year, Collins said.

Cross-Sell's statistics are not equivalent to the number of auto sales for July. They are based on titles registered by the Arkansas Motor Vehicle Commission in July.

For that reason, the number of titles registered for a particular dealer in a month is often different from the number of sales a dealer recorded in the month.

Landers Toyota Scion in Little Rock had the most new-vehicle registrations last month, 195; followed by Everett Buick Pontiac GMC in Bryant with 153; Russell Chevrolet Co., 151; and Bale Honda, 141, Cross-Sell said.

For the first seven months of the year, Landers Toyota was the top dealer with 1,115 registrations.

There were 36,509 new-vehicle registrations in the first seven months, compared with 53,268 through July last year.

Used-car registrations also declined in July, dropping to about 33,410 from about 34,800 in July last year. Landers Toyota Scion was the top used-car dealer for July.

There were about 21,950 private-vehicle transactions in July, compared with about 21,500 in July last year.