Sales of new cars are falling, as higher prices push consumers towards used cars, a segment that is seeing a corresponding spike in sales — and it's a worrying trend, say industry watchers.

For the first time in six years, first-quarter car sales have fallen below 3 million units, according to a joint forecast by J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. Automakers will have sold 2.94 million vehicles for the quarter, said Thomas King, senior vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power.

That's an overall slump of 2.5 percent year on year, to 4 million units, Power and LMC said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me” if the American automotive market is on the decline, “given where we are in the U.S. economic and automotive cycle,” Ford’s Executive Vice President Joe Hinrichs told NBC News.

Forecasts of what analysts have called “peak auto” have been surfacing for several years, with experts warning that the boom years following the Great Recession can’t go on much longer. New car demand did slip by about 2 percent in 2017 but, despite almost universal expectations that the downward trend would continue, 2018 actually brought a modest uptick in sales.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/automakers-start-sweat-new-car-sales-continue-lag-n988511