“Talking heads are expecting this calendar year to be the first since 2014 in which total vehicle sales in America drop below 17 million units. While it seems a bit early to sound that alarm, it cannot be denied that some companies have already dug themselves a big hole,” writes Matthew Guy for The Truth About Cars.

Ford had a positive story to tell about January -- sales were up about 7%, sources tell Bloomberg -- even if it’s not officially telling it yet. General Motors, similarly mum, did not. It reportedly slipped 7%.  

“It is important to note that two of the Detroit Three have effectively gone dark, with both Ford and GM refusing to release monthly sales reports. Instead, we are only deemed worthy of quarterly results,” Guy points out.

The Ford results are “a promising start to a year in which investors expect chief executive Jim Hackett to show results from his turnaround plan,” observes Mike Colias for the Wall Street Journal.

“The Detroit auto maker is feeling pressure to boost its cash flow as concerns about the company’s investment-grade rating and its ability to pay its current dividend are on the rise. Mr. Hackett, 20 months into his tenure, has promised to cut expenses and restructure floundering businesses overseas, while populating U.S. showrooms with more high-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles,” Colias adds.

“Smaller rival Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV reported a 2% rise in U.S. auto sales for January, helped by higher demand for its Ram pickup trucks and said it expects strong sales in 2019,” Reuters’ Rachit Vats, Rama Venkat, Shanti Nair and Ben Klayman report.

Overall, “U.S. light-vehicle sales dropped 1% in January, with higher fleet shipments offsetting lower retail volume, as the government shutdown and severe cold that blasted the Midwest this week dampened consumer demand,” David Phillips writes for Automotive News.

“The seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of sales for January came in at 16.9 million, down from 17.22 million in January 2018 and December’s 17.72 million rate, and marked the first month the pace of sales has dropped below 17 million since August,” he adds.

GM “joined Nissan Motor Co. (down 19%) and Toyota Motor Corp. (minus 6.6%) in posting bigger declines than analysts estimated in a Bloomberg News survey,” writeBloomberg’s David Welch, Gabrielle Coppola and Keith Naughton. Ford deliveries were “buoyed by strong demand for pickups, according to people familiar with results,” they point out.

“American Honda, behind record January light-truck deliveries, saw volume edge up 0.8% at the Honda brand and 9.6% at Acura. American Honda said its light-truck sales rose 4.3%, while car demand slipped 1.7%,” AutoNews’ Phillips reports.

Meanwhile, fingers were pointing at Old Man Winter.

“With the cold weather that’s hit, particularly this week, as well as the government shutdown that we had a little bit earlier, it has slowed things down a little bit,” Henio Arcangeli, SVP of automotive operations for Honda’s U.S. unit, tells Bloomberg. “Our sales were very strong in the beginning of the month.” 

But, Bloomberg’s Welch, Coppola and Naughton observe, “auto demand is likely to shrink in 2019 as borrowing costs rise and make it tougher for consumers to afford ever-costlier new vehicles. The average interest rate on new cars jumped to 6.2% last month, from 5% a year ago, according to car-buying researcher Edmunds.”

“Car shoppers who are returning to the market for the first time in a few years could be in for a big shock,” Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of industry analysis, tells Ian Thibodeau of the Detroit News. “Vehicle prices and interest rates are so high right now that consumers are facing the very real possibility of spending thousands of dollars more on a new vehicle than they did last time they purchased a new car.”

Indeed, USA Today’s Nathan Bomey writes that “some trends are clear. For one, the average price of a new vehicle continues to rise, in part because of the SUV boom and in part because Tesla's emergence as a major electric-vehicle seller has nudged up the overall average. Prices averaged $37,149 in January, up 4.2% from a year earlier, according to Kelley Blue Book.”

On the bright side, “the millennial demographic is maturing and is now poised to be a driving force in automotive marketing,” as Marty Miller, senior product marketing manager for Experian Automotive, wrote in a blog post last year. 

Reaching them, however, is going to be a whole different ball game than a clever Super Bowl ad, we suspect.