New Cars

Portland T415 Toyota Dock

Reading Joe Sherlock's post about new car sales got me to wondering how I could get a handle on these numbers. Car dealers sell about 16 million new cars every year in the USA. 16 million? What does that even mean? It may as well be one million or a zillion. But then I got the idea to compare it to our population and I realized that one out of every 20 people buys a new car every year. Since roughly half the population doesn't drive either because they are too little, too old & decrepit, or just don't drive, that means that it's one out of ten. Of course some of those that buy new cars buy a new one every year, and some only buy one in their entire lifetime.

The above image shows only a small portion of the parking lots given over to new car storage in North Portland.