Unsold Cars Around the World

i live in the midwest and have been trying to buy a new tahoe. the dealers are not dropping the price at all. they are offering 0% interest but no big price declines.

 

You're right about the middle class fading away... but for the most part the rich are NOT getting richer... getting quite a lot poorer, as a matter of fact.

 

I was in a Ford dealership in S.Cal in January and they were selling lots of cars and making deals. I was there getting my truck serviced.

On the way out I bought an '09 Shelby GT500 convertible with some bolt-on engine goodies and suspension. Sticker was 74k, I paid 56k total with tax and tags.

I saw a guy buy a diesel pickup truck that was stickered almost 50k. He paid just over 30k and I was impressed with that discount too.

I had been looking around for a Cadillac CTS-V but the GM dealerships would not make any kind of deal. They were actually trying to add a premium to the sticker price and they were colluding between dealerships on the phone here in S.Cal and lying about car deliveries.

Ford is making deals and selling cars if that sort of car is your thing.

 

CTS-V and Corvette are about the only two desirable cars GM sells... High end, wealthier buyers... perhaps dealers figuring to make "all the money" on those to keep their business afloat.

 

So all we need is a couple of million houses destroyed and a few million cars set on fire and this economy is back on it's feet in no time.

I hope Mr Obama reads elite trader.

 

I've had the same experience also. Somebody slammed into my car and the insurance company considered it total and paid me cash for it. I've been looking to buy a new car since then and the prices aren't even remotely reasonable. I"ve been sitting and waiting since last July for reasonable prices and still no luck.....now the problem is that the wife and I are so use to sharing one car that I'm really not that motivated to buy another car now!

I bought my car brand new in 2002 for about $14,500 plus tax and tags. Now I"m looking at the same model except its the 2008 version and it includes a couple useless features as standard and they have an MSRP of $19500. Are they joking, they're piling up these cars on the lots and they're not willing to sell the at the 2002 prices which given the current economic prices you'd think they'd be willing to do.

Oh well, hopefully for the sake of the car industry there aren't a lot of people out there like me who after a while just adjust to having one car in the family cause thats the last thing the car industry needs. (Although it would be nice to see a lot less cars on the road)

 

Checked into 2-3 year olds? Cars coming off of lease are back of their residuals, so maybe a good deal there for you.

 

There was an article in the WSJ about "lightly used" luxury cars....set a record for sales in Jan.

 

Found it........

Rising Sales of Used Luxury Cars Are Boon and Curse
'Certified Pre-Owned' Purchases Help Dealers Now but Could Hurt New-Car Sales
By JOSEPH B. WHITE
Article

Times are hard, but lots of Americans still have good jobs, and still want to drive around in style. The result: Demand for lightly-used luxury cars is booming even as new vehicle sales sag.

Manufacturers and auto industry data analysts each rely on different figures for measuring used-car demand. But most agree that demand for used luxury cars is remarkably strong compared to the wilting new vehicle market. The trends suggest affluent car buyers aren't paralyzed. But they are searching for a new balance between saving money and hanging on to the lifestyle to which they became accustomed in better times.

Buying a well-tended three-year old BMW with an extended warranty is likely prudent thrift in a household where a new Beemer every three years used to be the standard. A second-hand luxury car can also be a status symbol in its own right – a choice that says the owner is fortunate, and has good taste, but knows that now isn't a time for ostentatious displays.


Associated PressToyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus brand says its dealers sold 4,348 "certified pre-owned" Lexus vehicles in January, a new January record for the category. Certified pre-owned Lexus sales rose 19.5% in January 2009 compared to a year earlier, even as demand for new Lexus vehicles in January fell off a cliff, down 35% from a year before.

Mercedes-Benz, the luxury brand of Daimler AG, says its certified pre-owned sales rose nearly 27% in 2008 compared to the year before, and Mark Webster, the manager in charge of Mercedes-Benz USA's used-vehicle programs, says January sales of certified pre-owned vehicles jumped 86% from a weak year ago.

Overall, Mr. Webster says, sales of certified pre-owned vehicles marketed by seven major luxury brands rose about 31.5% in January.

BMW dealers sold about 10,000 certified pre-owned vehicles in January, and about 12,000 new vehicles, says Wayne Orchowski, vice president of sales at BMW's U.S. marketing arm. BMW spurred interest in its certified pre-owned cars and sport utilities with a 0.9% financing offer.

"The market in the luxury end and the mass market end is under siege," Mr. Orchowski says. Selling well-cared for, second hand BMW's "gives our dealerships the opportunity to weather the storm."

A "certified pre-owned" car – or "CPO" in industry-speak – is typically a two, three or four-year-old car that has been returned to the dealer after a lease. Details of manufacturers' CPO programs vary. But a CPO car is typically offered with an extended warranty, and assurances that the car has been carefully inspected and found to be free of mechanical gremlins.

A CPO car will typically be priced $500 to $1,000 higher than a used car that doesn't come with the extended warranty or the inspection promise. For people nervous about repair costs – and the whiz-bang technology on luxury vehicles can be pricey to fix – that premium is a fair price for peace of mind.

The more important fact is that for many people, the only difference between driving a certified used BMW 5-Series sedan and a brand new one is that the used one can cost nearly $20,000 less. In the New York City area, for example, 2006 BMW 525i sedans are being offered for around $26,000 to $29,000, depending on the mileage, according to the listings at www.tristatebmw.com. A new 2009 5-Series starts at $45,800.

Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation Inc., the largest U.S. auto retailer and the largest U.S. seller of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, says saving money isn't the only reason people are buying CPO luxury cars. Amid layoffs, corporate belt-tightening and criticism of business leaders in general, "it's more socially acceptable to buy a pre-owned luxury car than to show up in a completely brand new luxury car," Mr. Jackson says. "So they buy a used car."

Industry executives and analysts agree that for consumers, buying a CPO luxury car can be an attractive deal, especially if the buyer can take advantage of cut-rate financing or similar offers. Mercedes-Benz says a 2006 Mercedes E-350 with the 4Matic all-wheel-drive system could be priced around $29,500 with 35,000 miles on it (prices vary by dealership.) The sticker price for a loaded Toyota Avalon is more than $35,000.


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Auto Industry News | WSJ.com/AutosJeremy Anwyl, chief executive of Edmunds.com, says the potential problem for car makers is that these nearly-new used cars will displace too many new vehicle sales. Edmunds recently published an estimate that some half a million used-vehicle buyers during the past three months would otherwise have purchased a new vehicle.

Mr. Anwyl predicts that manufacturers will soon start paying attention to this substitution, and do something to steer dealers back to selling more new vehicles. "It's not so great for the car companies to spend all this money to create a used car buyer," he says.

But BMW's Mr. Orchowski and Mercedes' Mr. Webster say they're not too worried right now about the cannibalization of new vehicle sales by used car demand.

Mr. Webster says Mercedes' judgment is that many buyers of CPO Benzes are new to the brand, and might not have shopped Mercedes at all without the lure of the value priced used models.

At BMW, Mr. Orchowski says the company is glad to have the demand for used cars amid the broader demand drought, in part because it keeps its dealer network healthy, and in part because BMW has about 100,000 vehicles coming back from leases written in 2005 and 2006 for which it needs to find new homes.

Stephan Schroeder, a used-vehicle market analyst with J.D. Power and Associates, says a large crop of luxury vehicles will be turned in this year as leases written in better times end. "There's going to be a great supply of these three and four year old vehicles," he says.

That means the dynamics of supply and demand are in the customer's favor, with the caveat that dealers set the prices of used vehicles, not car makers. In other words, shop around.

Write to Joseph B. White at joseph.white@wsj.com

 

I hadn't checked older models yet. I was limiting my search to new cars ( I know new cars are a bad investment but I had a really bad lemon back in the day!). But I think I may go ahead and start looking at older models like you suggested. I just haven't had that "Damn I wish I had a car" moment in the past 6 months!