The slowdown in the housing market is already affecting the sales of pickup trucks. Housing slowdown brakes pickup sales | Chicago Tribune,
General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the world’s three largest automakers, are discovering that a housing slump can do what record fuel prices couldn’t: cripple demand for pickup trucks.
From 1995-2005, sales of full-size pickups surged 46 percent as home builders bought them for work-related projects and consumers followed suit.
But sales are down 14 percent this year, hurt by a housing slowdown that caused existing-home prices to drop for the first time in 11 years last month.