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New For 2014

New For 2014

After a torrid summer of new-car sales, things simmered down a bit in September. Whether September actually broke the long string of year-over-year monthly sales increases depends on how you look at the data. In absolute numbers, sales were down 4% overall. However, there were fewer selling days this year than last. If one looks at the annualized sales pace, we find this September’s rate of 15.3 million units to be better than September 2012’s 14.8 million figure. No matter which way you look at the this-year-versus-last-year scenario, this does constitute a slowdown compared to the summer. Sales fell to their slowest pace since April. The rest of the fall should tell us whether September’s slowdown was mostly just a calendar anomaly abetted by model-year changeover inventory issues, or whether it signals the sating of the public’s pent-up demand for new cars.

With open-range cattle grazing where they please -- and road signs warning drivers to that effect -- the beautiful, desolate canyon lands of Colorado are equally hospitable to old pickups, trailers, and campers. In this John Ford cowboy milieu, all sandstone monument and sprawling mesa, the 2014 Audi SQ5 looks as spit-shined and citified as a Boston minister fresh off the stagecoach.