Next year could be the new-car market’s best since 2006, with the latest projections from Edmunds.com calling for 16.4 million sales — not to mention, an expected 300,000 additional lease returns that should account for roughly a third of the overall sales growth.

“The average age of all light vehicles on the road climbed to 11.4 years in 2013, and an aging fleet will continue to force buyers back to the market next year,” said Lacey Plache, the chief economist for Edmunds.

“With used-car prices still elevated over past norms and used-car supply still tight, the new-car market will remain attractive to many of these buyers.”

Pushing the 16.4 million sales projection is the expectation for a “continued release of pent-up demand,” Edmunds indicated. The last time the new-car market was this strong was 2006, when 16.5 million new cars were sold.

As for the current year, Edmunds anticipates 2013 will end up having about 15.5 million new-vehicle sales. Plache pointed to next year’s auto sales environment looking quite similar to this year’s.  Among the similarities is the aforementioned hike in lease returns.

Edmunds is calling the lease returns for full-year 2013 to climb by 500,000 over the 2012 total. For 2014, Edmunds believes there will be 300,000 more lease returns than the sum expected this year.

Going back to the new-car sales growth, Edmunds did offer one caveat: the 6-percent increase Edmunds projects for next year would be the weakest year-over-year growth since 2009, when sales bottomed out.

“The economy has not yet improved enough for recovery to widely reach the groups hardest hit by the recession, including young people, lower income households and small businesses,” Plache said. “Even though auto sales from these groups have improved from recession lows, their participation in the recovery still lags the rest of the market.”
 

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