New-vehicle registrations slip 18%

LITTLE ROCK — Registration of new vehicles in Arkansas declined in April, the first time in 19 months, a Kentucky automotive research firm says.

There were 7,225 new vehicles registered in the state last month, down 18 percent from about 8,800 registered in April of last year, said Cross-Sell of Lexington, Ky., which provides market analysis for the automotive industry.

Registrations had been growing by double-digit levels for the previous 14 months.

“We’re finally seeing [registrations] level off following those really astronomical rates of increase,” said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

It was obvious the doubledigit growth couldn’t go on forever, said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

“But there shouldn’t be an urge to panic or to make a trend out of one month,” Deck said.

Nationally, auto sales also slowed in April, due in part to the Easter holiday, bad weather and fewer selling days than a year earlier, analysts said. Overall, national vehicle sales were up 2.3 percent in April after having jumped 13 percent in the first three months of the year.

Tom Roy, chief financial officer of Frank Fletcher Auto Group, said sales were up about 6 percent in April at Fletcher’s 13 dealerships in Arkansas and Missouri, compared with double digit improvements in previous months.

“April last year was unusually strong,” Roy said. “And April is generally a little bit slower month. Nobody knows for a fact, but they always say it’s because of taxes. If people owe taxes, they always wait until April to pay them.”

Even though it represented a significant decline in Arkansas registrations from a year earlier, last month’s total was the sixth-highest in the past three years.

Dennis Jungmeyer, president of the Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association, said he was uncertain why registrations would have dropped in April.

“I have no idea what could have caused the blip, and I do think it’s a blip,” Jungmeyer said. “The dealers I’ve talked with said that sales may have softened a bit in April, but everybody is still pretty optimistic about the industry. Sales forecasts for the rest of the year are still high.”

Monthly auto registrations in Arkansas don’t equate precisely with same-period sales because buyers have 30 days to register a vehicle, Cross-Sell says.

There were more Chevrolets registered in April than any other make, accounting for 17.8 percent of the vehicles. As usual, pickup trucks were the top three models registered.

All makes of full-size pickups accounted for 20.2 percent of the vehicles registered last month.

There also was a drop in the registrations of used vehicles sold by dealers last month.

There were 12,339 titled in April, down 29 percent from 17,362 titled in a year earlier.

There were 20,908 vehicles titled from private party transactions last month, down 30 percent from 29,798 registered in April 2011.

Roy said the Fletcher dealerships are projecting a sales increase of 3 percent to 5 percent this year, a conservative goal because 2011 was such a good year.

“There was a lot of pent-up demand taken care of in 2011,” Roy said. “Some of that demand has been met, but none of us know how much. I still think we’ll see increases for 2012.”

Cross-Sell’s parent company buys the registration information from Arkansas’ Office of Motor Vehicles.