Shoppers

Here’s a buying opportunity for smart used-car shoppers

By Betty C. Morrow 3 months ago

Americans bought more than 225,000 Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) cars in September. That’s a 2% increase from August and a 1% increase compared to September of last year.

Selling too fast for certification

But the slight increase masks a startling phenomenon. CPO sales could have been much higher, except that dealers may be selling used cars too fast to pass them through the certification process. That creates a unique buying opportunity for smart shoppers (more on that in a moment).

Kevin Chartier, vice president at Manheim Consulting, explains, “In today’s market, everything is selling so quickly and at such high prices, that I think that in many cases the dealers are selling cars before they get a chance to pull them into their shops to spend the time to recondition them up to full CPO standards.”

(Manheim Consulting and Kelley Blue Book share the same parent company, Cox Automotive.)

Also see:

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Dawn of the electric vehicle age? One car shopper’s experience.

By Betty C. Morrow 5 months ago

Chicago

Seated for the first time in an electric car – a Ford Mustang Mach-E so new it doesn’t have a sticker price yet – Mary Beermann has a broad grin on her face. She struggles to open the doors, the trunk, and even the cover to the connector plug – a boomer flailing in the push-button dawn of the electric-car age.

But none of this seems to daunt her.

“I think this is it,” she says. “This is my next car.”

Why We Wrote This

Many people tout the coming electric vehicle revolution. Yet EVs still make up only 1.8% of the car market. Will the early 2020s end up being a pivot point for the industry, or will EVs remain a novelty?

It’s partly my doing, really. A few weeks earlier, Mary had called me to ask for friendly advice about buying an electric car. I had almost

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Inventory Shortages Drive Car Shoppers to Neighboring States: Cars.com Reports 10% of Recent Buyers Traveled Across State Lines to Purchase a Car | News

By Betty C. Morrow 7 months ago

– June 10, 2021

Car Supply Shortage Squeezes Sellers and Shoppers as Cars.com Finds Nearly 1 in 3 Recent Buyers Drove 100 Miles or More for the Car They Want1 

CHICAGO, June 10, 2021 — According to recent research from leading digital automotive marketplace and solutions provider Cars.comTM (NYSE: CARS), nearly 10% of recent car buyers drove out of state to purchase their desired vehicle, with more than half (52%) of those traveling 25 miles, nearly 20% traveling 50 miles and 13% of buyers traveling more than 250 miles to a dealership due to ongoing new- and used-car inventory shortages.1 

“With the current auto inventory challenges, recent car buyers are going to great lengths to find the car they want,” said Kelsey Mays, Cars.com assistant managing editor, news. “I don’t anticipate this trend slowing down, either. Of consumers currently in the market and shopping for a car,

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High prices, few discounts and low inventory await car shoppers

By Betty C. Morrow 8 months ago

Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Car shoppers hoping to cash in on Memorial Day weekend sales events may want to rein in their expectations.

On top of reduced inventory due to a shortage of microchips — key parts needed for today’s autos to operate — and unrelenting consumer demand pushing prices higher, there are fewer incentives being offered by manufacturers and dealers.

The average incentive is $2,957, down from $4,825 in May 2020 and $3,878 in May 2019, according to a new forecast from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive.

“People will be in for a bit of a surprise,” said Ivan Drury, senior manager of insights at Edmunds.com. “There will be little to no negotiation on price.

“We’re seeing more people pay sticker price or above.”

At the start of the pandemic more than a year ago, when dealerships and manufacturing plants were shut down, chipmakers pivoted to

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