Isles’ car and truck A solid fourth quarter made 2002 a hugely successful year for sales of new automobiles in Hawaii, according to the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association.
sales rebounded
in ’02; up 5%
A 4.4 percent increase in the last quarter
of 2002 contributed to the big turnaroundBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comDealers say they expect smaller gains this year, with sales flat or up about 1 percent from last year.
Retail sales of new cars and trucks rose 5.2 percent to 54,188 last year from 51,521 in 2001, helped by a 4.4 percent increase in fourth-quarter sales to 12,916 from 12,367 a year earlier.
The biggest sales year on record was 1989, when 57,456 new cars, vans and light trucks were sold, after which annual sales steadily declined, hitting a low of 40,673 in 1998.
The full-year results were not a record, but they represented a big turnaround, said Dave Rolf, HADA executive director.
"It's just an extraordinary number in light of the fact that the rest of car sales in the country haven't been as robust," he said.
During the "lost decade" of the 1990s, Hawaii had "the longest downturn of any economy in America, and car sales plummeted from around 57,000 in 1989 to about 40,000 in 1998," Rolf said.
"That means in five years we have gone from 40,000 to 54,000, one of the largest increases in the country."
Rolf attributed the strong showing to increased consumer confidence and the success of features in new vehicles, particularly sport utility vehicles and minivans.
In addition, low interest rates and aggressive incentives offered by automakers have helped boost sales.
The full-year sales figure was at the high end of predictions made early in the year, when dealers expected 2002 sales to rise 3 percent to 5 percent.
In the final quarter, the biggest increase in sales was in new trucks, which rose 6.2 percent to 2,841 units from 2,674 units in the last quarter of 2001.
Wes Kimura, vice president of strategic planning for Toyota dealer Servco Pacific Inc., said his company could have sold more vehicles if they had been available.
Toyota's Tacoma truck was a hot seller, but supply dropped in the fourth quarter because of the disruption on the West Coast docks. "All of our trucks sold in the U.S. market are built in the United States and shipped to Hawaii via the West Coast," Kimura said. "Most of our products were selling really well. We were only limited by supply," he said.
Eric Miyasaki, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Corp. in Hawaii, also cited problems caused by the dock troubles.
"The second and third quarters were really great," Miyasaki said.
"We fell down in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. We think some of that was due to the (West Coast lockout)."
He said many people had held off buying new cars for years after the Gulf war, but last year took advantage of low interest rates to refinance their homes and use some of the cash to buy cars. There is still some pent-up demand, but there is also a big question of what will happen to the island economy if there is a war in Iraq, Miyasaki said.
As usual in Hawaii, imports sold better than U.S.-made vehicles, with imported cars and trucks making up two-thirds of the total market in the final quarter and the full year.
