If you’re in the market for a new car, watching for the monthly car sale numbers announced by the major automakers can often help you determine if it would be best to buy now, or to wait a bit more for better prices. When there’s solid consumer demand and car sales are brisk, prices remain strong. Without any existing hints of weakness, it’s unlikely we would see better deals due to increased manufacturer incentives and/or Dealer discounts (although we can see this at times on particularly slow-selling models). When car sales are weak, look for added incentives and more attractive financing deals to move vehicles off the lots. This is a much better time to negotiate your very best deal. Let’s use the current car market climate (August/2007) as an example. Right now, I believe we’re likely just around the corner from bigger incentives and better financing deals. Dealers just have to start getting these vehicles off the lot. Sales have been weak in recent months and vehicles are languishing on Dealer lots … some for many months. Car sales in June were already weak. And in July, while not plummeting, they took another significant hit. What’s more, even Toyota was a victim of a weak market. Not only were vehicle sales down from June, they were also down from July of last year. For example, Toyota was down 7% from last July, Chrysler Group dropped 8%, Ford was down 19% and GM was off a hefty 22%. In our current economic environment, these kinds of numbers have got to be making the automakers quite nervous. And it’s particularly serious because many of the 2008 models will soon be arriving. Once you identify the overall sales trend, you can often learn even more specific details about individual models in the monthly news announcements. In the passenger car segment, for example, Chevrolet Impala sales were 20% below last year’s levels. The Ford Fusion dropped 31% year over year. Sales of Chrysler’s 300 were down 15% for the month. None of these models are heavily discounted at the moment, but if sales continue to fall, incentives are sure to rise. Among pickup trucks, Chevrolet Silverado sales have plummeted 30% from ‘06 levels. And even backed by considerable incentives, Dodge Ram sales still fell 10% from last July. The Ford F150 currently doesn’t have a lot of incentives and sales were down 18% from last year. Among SUVs, the Chevy Tahoe was running 12% percent below last July. The Ford Explorer was actually clobbered with sales down 23% year-to-date. The Dodge Durango took the biggest hit, with July’s sales down 50% from June and 26% from last July. And even Toyota 4Runner sales were down 29% from last July and 21% for the year. I think you get the idea, when you are in the market for a new car, checking the latest sales figures can help you determine if prices are likely to go lower. And individual model figures can indicate the most glaring failures and successes. Joshua Rose is a Used Car Broker at Auto-Broker-Magic.com and buys cars for people as their representative at Dealer-Only auctions. He also advises car buyers how they can do this themselves at Open-To-The-Public Car Auctions. Tags: auto, autombile, autos, buy, car, cars, new, pickup, suv, time, truck Related PostsPost a comment
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