Utahns reject gas-guzzlers
75% in survey say their next car will be more fuel-efficient
Is it a new car-buying paradigm, or will gas-guzzlers regain their supremacy, now that gas prices have descended from their $3-per-gallon pinnacle?
In a poll conducted in November by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV, more than half (51 percent) of respondents said they plan to buy a more fuel-efficient car the next time around. Another 24 percent said they "probably will," while 12 percent said they probably won't and 6 percent said they definitely won't.
Four hundred Utahns participated in the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Sixty-six percent of the same sample group said they believed Congress should compel automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles, while 15 percent said Congress "probably" should require higher fuel-efficiency standards. Eight percent said "probably not," and 9 percent said Congress should "definitely not" have such a requirement.
Randy Aldridge, sales manager at Menlove Toyota in Bountiful, said the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles has soared in tandem with gasoline prices. Many of the
"It seems like any time the gas prices go up, the cheaper, more fuel-economical cars come into play," Aldridge said. "We've definitely seen that over the last four months. SUVs and trucks have tapered off, and we've seen a big increase in interest in the others, like the hybrid Prius."
Hybrid sales at Menlove have tripled in the last four months, Aldridge said, with similar results for the popular Corolla line.
But whether the last four months has ushered in a new auto-buying environment — a new and lasting preference for smaller, more economical vehicles — is unclear. Even now, Aldridge said, he's seeing renewed interest in SUVs and trucks, now that gas prices are below $2 per gallon.
Kelly K. Matthews, executive vice president and economist at Wells Fargo Bank, said while energy costs, amplified by the summer's hurricanes, clearly swung the car-buying pendulum in favor of more efficient automobiles, likely in the long-term it will settle closer to the middle, between efficiency and performance, power and style.
"The question is, what's going to end up as normality?" Matthews said. "If all of the sudden, we do what has happened in the past, and find gas prices as low as they were before the calamity occurred or even lower, this interest in small, fuel-efficient automobiles tends to lose out. The perfect example is the rise of the big SUV over the last few years. People seemed to decide that if, in fact, we had gasoline at $1.50 or $2 per gallon, they'd rather have a big, nice car."
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