After a couple of years of record sales, auto dealers nationwide are seeing a slowdown in car sales, which has some worried about a long-expected decline. But that may be just "chicken little" thinking.
KTRH Car Pro Jerry Reynolds says a lot more Americans lease these days.
"We're gonna see a lot of people going from one lease to another lease real soon; I don't think there's anything to panic about."
What's the big deal if auto sales are down? Reynolds says it is a big deal because it's not just car sales -- cars are made of parts and lots of those parts-makers are here in Texas.
"Those parts-makers employ millions of people in the United States; they're a huge part of the economy."
Reynolds says Houston is a special case because of how many cars were lost to Hurricane Harvey.
"They wanna compare that to last year and there's no way to compare that; I mean, half a million cars were lost in late August and early September last year and those cars were being replaced, so Houston's gonna show some down numbers but it's strictly because of Harvey."
Reynolds says a lot of us got new cars twice last year -- before and after Harvey -- so we're not trading them in quite so quickly.