Buying

The pandemic car buying rebound is real as sales rocket 110%

By Betty C. Morrow 1 week ago

America is itching for a new car, collectively.


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It wasn’t hard to imagine substantially better year-over-year sales figures for April, considering much of the US shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but record breaking sales? That’s the expectation, according to JD Power and LMC Automotive’s retail sales forecast, released Wednesday, with an estimated 1,325,500 new cars sold.

April 2021 sales are expected to catapult upward by 110% year-over-year, compared to April 2020 when millions of Americans were under stay-at-home orders and numerous businesses closed their doors. In short, as we wave goodbye to this month, the retail sales figure will go down as the highest ever recorded for the month of April. However, to underscore the excellent sales month, adjusted for the number of selling days, sales are still

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New car or used? Sometimes buying new can be smarter

By Betty C. Morrow 2 weeks ago

You probably remember your dad telling you to always buy a used car, because they are so much cheaper than new.

That’s not always the case anymore in this topsy-turvy pandemic year.

“We’ve all heard this: ‘Hey, you lose 20-30% of the car’s value when you drive it off the lot,'”said Karl Brauer of the automotive website ISeeCars.com.

But with used car prices at all time highs, Brauer said some used cars are so expensive that the new version can be a better deal.

“With some vehicles, right now the market is such that you are pretty much better buying the new car,” he said.

He cites Tesla as an example. A used version with 10,000 miles on it is valued just 1% less than its brand-new counterparts.

“If it’s 2% cheaper to buy a one-year-old one, why not just just buy a brand new one?” he said.

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Buying a Car That Comes from Canada Sounds Fun, Until There’s a Recall

By Jaime E. Love 9 months ago

From Car and Driver

  • Local TV station KEYT in California helped the owner of a Mercedes C63 AMG S, which originated in Canada, get needed recall work done.
  • At first, the owner was told the dealer wouldn’t touch the recall work, since the car has a Canadian VIN, and that he should take it to Canada for service.
  • The Mercedes dealer did update the car’s software in the end, but this dilemma points out that gray-market vehicles can cause their owners some red tape.

Importing a car means bringing roughly equal amounts of excitement and challenge across the border. When the car in question is a Canadian 2015 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG S, or any other car that originated in Canada and is being brought into the United States, it might come with enough automotive cooties that your local dealer may be hesitant to work on it.

That’s what happened

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