2017 tops ’16 for Colo. car registers

Coloradans registered tens of thousands more cars, trucks and SUVs between January and November this year than they did over the first 11 months of 2016. Continued strong migration to the state and a major hail storm were contributing factors, experts say.

It total, Colorado residents registered 193,653 new vehicles between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30 this year. They also got the paperwork in order for 208,636 late-model used vehicles (those seven years old or newer) during the same period, according to the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association-sponsored Colorado Auto Outlook report for November.

That 402,289 vehicle total represents a 8.2 percent jump — 30,635 cars — over the January through November period last year, when the state saw 181,955 new and 189,699 used cars registered, according to the report, released last week.

“It bodes well for Denver and Colorado in general,” Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president Tim Jackson said. “I think it verifies that we’re still a growing market in new and late-model used car sales as demonstrated by both those categories.”

Jackson pointed to the number of people moving to the state as a driver for strong auto sales.

U.S. Census Bureau data showed Colorado added 77,059 new residents between July 2016 and July 2017. Of those, 46,838 came from net migration. That follows a 2016 where the state added roughly 90,000 residents and a 2015 when it added 98,000.

When it came to new vehicle registrations, the passenger car category saw a 1.5 decrease in registrations over the 11-month study period, while the light truck category — which includes SUVs and vehicles with all-wheel drive platforms like Subarus — saw 9.9 percent growth, suggesting that when people buy new here, they are buying all-weather vehicles.

The brands that saw the greatest sales growth in Colorado this year over last included Nissan, Infiniti, Mercedes, Toyota, Volkswagen and Jaguar. Jaguar’s sales shot up 129 percent. People purchased 442 new Jaguars in the first 11 months of 2017, and just 193 over the first 11 months of 2016. Jackson attributed this to the company rolling out a mass-marketed SUV in 2017, the F-Pace. Of course, Jaguar’s sales volume was nowhere near that of market leaders like Toyota (29,415 new cars sold in Colorado so far this year).

When looking at contributors to the auto sellers’ big year, Jackson said the May 8 hailstorm that clobbered the western Denver metro area — including many dealerships — certainly played a part. Registrations of new cars in July of this year shot up 26.8 percent over July 2016 as people replaced vehicles totaled in that storm with new wheels.

Jackson believes auto sales would have grown in Colorado this year without the storm, but the hail, “helped us grow more.”