A Look Back:  Auto Sales By Year For The Last 20 Years

I thought you might be interested in taking a look back at auto sales in the United States over the last 20 years.  I have been in the car business or auto industry for all these years and remember the majority of them.  2009 was the low, and 2016 was the high.

Starting in 2004, 16,000,000+ sales was the norm, and the car business was actually quite good.  Then the financial crash of 2008 came and sales plummeted.  2009 was even worse, and dealers, automakers, and the Government panicked  In June of 2009, the Government set aside one billion dollars for the cash for clunkers program.  Clearly, it was not the answer to save abysmal auto sales, but did give the industry a boost at a good time.

Starting in 2010, sales started to rise as the economy rebounded, and led to growth over the next seven years.  From 2015 to 2019, the auto industry chalked up over 17,000,000 sales in each of those years, and it looked like that would be the norm forever.

In January 2020, we learned of Covid-19.  Many dealerships were closed or severely limited on what they could do and when they could be open.  Masks became a way of life, and we heard of the number of deaths multiple times per day.  Auto sales dropped like an anchor, falling 2.5 million sales from 2019.  Sales stayed at about the same level for 2021.

Although Covid-19 fears subsided somewhat in 2022, a by-product of the pandemic was the loss of production of microchips that went into cars.  Production was severely hampered, and sales fell back to 13 million+ vehicles.  This continued through the majority of 2023, but microchips became more available in the second half of the year.  In spite of rising interest rates and a UAW strike starting in September, the auto industry was able to rebound to over 15 million vehicles in 2023, a welcome number for the auto industry.

Here are total sales of vehicles in the United States from 2004 through 2023:

Photo Credit:  ekapol sirachainan/Shutterstock.com.