Average age of Cars on U.S. Roads Increase

Jan 23 2012

The article below refers to the United States, but one can be fairly sure a similar situation exists in the United Kingdom.  According to the latest research carried out by motoring market intelligence company Polk, people are keeping their cars for longer.  The average age of cars and light delivery vehicles on U.S. roads has increased to 10.8 years.

The average age of passenger cars has increased from 11 years to 11.1 years between 2010 and 2011.  In the case of light delivery vehicles, this increase was from 10.1 years to 10.4 years.

Analysts believe that the increase can largely be ascribed to the low sales volumes the market experienced in 2008 and 2009.  The age of the average car on the road in the U.S. has now been increasing for five years in a row.

Polk says that, with an increasing number of people signing up for car loans on SUVs and CUVs, these figures will most likely change significantly in the years to come.

In the U.S. the new car market experienced a rebound during 2011 – unlike the UK market, where sales dropped another 4.4% last year.  It is, therefore, likely that eventually the ageing rate in the U.S. will slow down while the figure for the United Kingdom will increase further – at least for the foreseeable future.

Last year, in fact, marked the end of a slump in the total number of cars on U.S. roads that we have seen since 2008.  At the moment there are 240.5 million cars in the United States – coming very close to the figure for 2009.

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