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.
Pre-Sell New Car Inventory to Earn Future Allocations
“One thing that hasn’t changed in the inventory-constrained environment is the way factories award inventory to dealers based on their lowest days to sell and sales volume rates,” vAuto’s Brian Finkelmeyer says.
Be Aware the Level of New Vehicle Mark-ups
The question for dealers is this: How much above MSRP can you reasonably go and avoid the risk of blow-back from customers? Dealers who use new car pricing tools can identify prevailing retail asking prices in a market and set their prices accordingly.
Will New Car Inventory Challenges Remain?
Executives at some OEMs have suggested that the more lean and limited new vehicle supplies will shape factory production targets in the future. That is, some are saying they won’t over-build new vehicle supplies as they’ve done in the past.
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More Inventory Trend Articles
Read about other major inventory trends dealerships across the country are facing along with vAuto’s point of view on the state of the industry.
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.