LITTLE ROCK — New-vehicle registrations in Arkansas dropped by 21 percent last month, but the expected flood of registrations following the "cash for clunkers" program should show up in September.
There were 5,180 new automobile registrations in the state in August, down from 6,556 in August last year, according to Cross-Sell of Lexington, Ky., which provides market analysis on auto registrations in 27 states.
Despite the drop in registrations, vehicle sales likely were up significantly in August because of the federal government's successful cash for clunkers program, said Dennis Jungmeyer, president of the Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association. The program, which ran from late July through late August, offered owners of vehicles getting 18 miles per gallon or less $3,500 to $4,500 when they traded for new vehicles that met certain mileage requirements.
There is a lag time between the sale of the vehicles and the time when the vehicles are registered with the state, Jungmeyer said.
Arkansas law allows up to 30 days after a vehicle is purchased before it must be registered. Buyers must receive certain paperwork from the dealer before registration, and that can take up to several weeks.
Cross-Sell's statistics are based on titles registered by the Arkansas Motor Vehicle Commission in August.
The registrations do not strictly translate to vehicle sales for the month, said Chas Jordan, a Cross-Sell spokesman. For that reason, the number of titles registered for a particular dealer in a month are often different than the number of sales a dealer recorded in the month, Jordan said.
All indications from autodealers in the state were that August's sales were better than sales from a year earlier, Jungmeyer said.
"It would be my guess that September [registrations] are going to be unusually high," he said.
Arkansas wasn't the only state to report a decline in registrations in August, Jordan said. Seven other states tracked by Cross-Sell had registration declines of more than 10 percent in August. Colorado's registrations were worse than Arkansas', dropping 29 percent.
"We have seen bumps[in registrations] in certain states," Jordan said.
Most people wait as long as they can to register their vehicles, said Michael Munns, Arkansas' assistant commissioner of revenue for operations and administration. One reason is that this is when sales taxes are paid on the purchase.
The next Cross-Sell report appears certain to show gains in sales. In Arkansas, with a few days still remaining for consumers to register vehicles bought in late August, Munns said the state already has recorded 69 more new vehicles sold in August this year compared with August 2008.
Even with the August numbers incomplete, the state has logged almost 1,600 more vehicles sold for the month than recorded in July, Munns said.
The Cross-Sell report says 15 of the 27 states examined had increases in new-car registrations in August. Wisconsin had the biggest increase, up 38.6 percent, followed by Tennessee, up 29.6 percent, and Maine, up 29.4 percent.
Jungmeyer noted that Arkansas is one of only three or four states in the country that require automobiles to be registered at state offices instead of at the auto dealership. As a result, registrations occur much faster in most other states and cash for clunkers deals would have been much more likely to appear in the Cross-Sell report for August.
The federal government has paid Arkansas dealers for about 95 percent of the cash for clunkers transactions, Jungmeyer said.
The other 5 percent should be repaid within a few weeks, he said.
The Cross-Sell report found that Russell Chevrolet Co. of North Little Rock had the most buyers making new vehicle registrations in August with 152. Russell's sales include those at the company's Honda dealership. Next were Landers Toyota Scion of Little Rock with 147; Everett Buick Pontiac GMC of Bryant with 103; North Point Toyota Scion of North Little Rock with 95;and North Point Ford Lincoln Mercury with 91.
Landers Toyota Scion is well ahead of other dealers in the state in new-vehicle registrations through the first eight months of the year with 1,262 registrations. Landers also was the No. 1 dealer in used-car registrations in August with 132, followed by Toyota of Northwest Arkansas with 65.
Business, Pages 19, 20 on 09/29/2009