Auto Meltdown: Too Many Cars?

We partially agree with Portland State prof Carl Abbott's weekend story for History News Service (oxymoron noted) arguing the car market is saturated. But mostly, we think he's out of his tree. Abbott says Americans are not buying new cars because we already have them. Clearly Abbott hasn't recently counted his wife's shoes. Clearly he doesn't teach marketing. Buyers don't tend to be rational.
We don't want to pick on Abbott too much. We think he may have stumbled onto something. What he's trying to say is that cars are now less like shoes and more like refrigerators and land-line telephones -- if you've got one that works, you don't really want another.
If that's true, it's not that Americans finally realize they don't need more cars (they don't), but that car makers have turned the GTO into a Frigidaire.