Americans Holding onto their cars longer now

Impact of a bad economy and job market is seen everywhere.  Americans are keeping their vehicles longer and postponing their buying.  Which means that new car sales will be impacted in the coming months.

Americans are holding onto their new vehicles for about six years — 27 percent longer than before the recession — due to the weak economy and better durability of cars and trucks, a study by market analyst Polk found.The findings show the longest average ownership of new cars and trucks since Polk began its study in 2001 by analyzing U.S. vehicle registrations.

The Polk study showed that the average length of ownership of new vehicles in the third quarter of 2011 was 71.4 months, up from 66.7 months in the first quarter. Before the downturn in auto sales that began in the third quarter of 2008, owners of new vehicles kept them for about 56 months.

Source

If such actions are limited to the individual consumers that is still fine, but my worry is that this “postponing of important / critical expense” is going to impact critical infrastructure in US as well.  Specifically, in the current election year.  That, could be fatal at times – as we saw in case of levies in Louisiana during Katrina.