AMERICA'S MOTOR CAR LIMIT

Evening Star, Issue 19454, 12 January 1927, Page 11

AMERICA'S MOTOR CAR LIMIT

Motor car ownership in the United States can reach the 40,000,000 mark without danger of saturation in the industry, Mr H. F. Kingsley, of Chicago, declared at the automotive equipment show in Chicago a few weeks ago. “Registration of cars has doubled in the last five years,” said Mr Kingsley, “yet in 1921 experts talked of the approaching saturation-point. Five years ago automobiles in America numbered 10,500,000. To-day they total more than 20,000,000. Future rate of increase will not he so rapid because of growing replacement requirements, but the 40,000,000. car mark will he reached easily within the next fifteen years. There are more prospective automobile owners in the country at present than there are cars registered. More families can afford two cars, today than were able to buy one car. ten years ago. National income is increasing at the rate of 2,000,000,000 dollars a year, income statistics show. Wages in the steel and iron industry have risen 140 per cent, since 1914, while in the automobile industry they have jumped 122 per cent. Yet the actual selling price of cars is 29 per cent, lower than it was twelve years ago. The industry is approaching the point where it will take nearly all the present factories to replace cars going out of service every year. The annual toll of scrapping and junking will soon be 4,000,000 cars. to the nation’s present annual ou., at.”