Sales of used vehicles in the first half of fiscal 2009 hit an all-time low of 1.92 million units, down 7.3 percent from a year earlier amid the flagging economy, an industry body said Tuesday.
Sales of secondhand vehicles, excluding minivehicles with engines of up to 660cc, were the lowest since 1978, when the Japan Automobile Dealers Association first compiled comparable data.
The association traced the sales fall to both anemic private consumption and the shortage of good-quality, low-mileage cars vehicle owners traded in for new ones.
"Consumers have been tightening their belts, so we cannot be optimistic about the outlook for the second half of the business year," an association official said.
By vehicle type, sales of passenger cars of up to 2,000cc dropped 5.6 percent to 866,771 units, while bigger cars fell 7.4 percent to 763,792 units.