Top Inventory Trends in the Market Today

The best content from industry veterans to inform dealers and solve their toughest challenges.

Inventory Trends

There’s an old saying in the car business that you can’t sell a car you don’t have in hand.

The truth of this statement proved especially true for dealers in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through much of 2020 and 2021, the chief problem dealers faced wasn’t the perennial challenge of selling cars.

Why Dealers Should Adopt Variable-Based Used Car Management

Strong retail demand and limited used vehicle supplies effectively eliminated the perennial worry of aged inventory for dealers. But depreciation returned when the average days supply of vehicles in dealer inventories hovered near 50 days, meaning some dealers had inventory they’d acquired 45 or 60 days earlier at the top of the market.

Customers Buying Preferences Continue to Evolve

For more than a decade, Cox Automotive has been tracking what consumers appreciate and expect from dealers when the time arrives to purchase a new or used vehicle. From this research, two clear trendlines emerge that hold significant implications for dealers who want to grow their sales volume and profitability of their new and used vehicle departments.

Turn Challenging New Car Inventory Levels into Opportunities

The good news is that while dealers wish they had more new vehicles to sell, they’ve also gained in experience in optimizing the outcomes for their new vehicle departments. The following represent best practices we’ve gleaned to assist dealers to make every new vehicle count at the time of sale and beyond.

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