As the economic climate of the United States continues to fail to respond to attempted corrective measures by the federal government, J.D. Power and Associates cuts it existing 2008 forecast for light-vehicle sales from 14.2 million to 13.6 million while industry analysts forecast worse times to come.

For 2009, the J.D. Power forecast now projects 13.2 million, rather than 14.3 million with retail sales predicted at 10.6 million vehicles. Vehicle sales in the United States in 2007 totaled 16.15 million down from 16.56 million for 2006.

Nigel Griffiths, managing director of global forecasting for Global Insight (USA) Inc. was quoted by Automotive News. "Clearly, this is not a U.S. issue alone. We are moving from a liquidity crisis to an insolvency crisis right now. There is increasing evidence that this has affected the real economy, and as we see the automotive industry as the heart of the real economy, we are really taking a hit now."

George Magliano, Global Insight director of automotive industry research for North America predicted a shift from bad to worse. "We are probably going to see (a seasonally adjusted annual selling rate of) 11.5 million or 12 million units some months, numbers that we last saw in the 1980s. We're going to touch new lows in this business, back to the days of the 1990s and 1980s, and that's really going to hurt our business. The word we're using is 'brutal.' "