You may have read about the Ford Trucks:
It’s no secret that the global chip shortage is wreaking havoc on automakers; even chip-hoarding Toyota is starting to feel the heat. Stellantis, Ford, GM—pretty much everybody is getting a taste of a major supply-chain shortcoming, and needless to say, it’s bad for business.
But just because vehicles need chips to be delivered doesn’t mean you have to stop making ’em altogether. Case-in-point, Ford is still making trucks; it’s just making them without the necessary bits, holding them until the chips finally come in, and then shipping them out to dealers. Ford is doing this with what looks like thousands of vehicles, and you can see the results from space.
I am not sure how much is this chip shortage affecting the rest of the market. But what can I tell you is that the prices of used cars have gone ballistic. On account of the moving and other things, we decided to sell my wife’s SUV which was smaller than mine and just drive up in one vehicle. She bought it brand spanking new three years ago for $20,000 and today she sold it to the same dealer for $19,000 in a transaction that may have lasted 32 minutes which was as long as it took for the salesperson to test drive it, to fill the paperwork and have the check issued. I joked that she “leased” the vehicle for less than a buck a day, not counting gas and insurance. To say we were surprised is a serious misunderstanding.
But the shocker was when we checked how much my “previously owned” vehicle bought last November would bring to the table. Without going into details, CarMax offered me $3,000 over what we paid for it. I could actually make a profit.
This is batshit insane. How can people afford to buy a vehicle either new or used? The Missus also told me that while she waited for the paperwork and the check, she heard other sales people on the phone talking to prospective clients and apologizing that there were short on offerings. The common phrase heard was “Sorry, that is all we have in stock.”
Needless to say we are going to take very much care of our remaining form of transportation.
A local dealer has been running ads on TV the past week or so saying exactly this. The message is “Due to the chip shortage your few-year old car may be worth as much as what you paid for it — come trade it in for a new one now”.
A local dealer has been running ads on TV the past week or so saying exactly this. The message is “Due to the chip shortage your few-year old car may be worth as much as what you paid for it — come trade it in for a new one now”.
One of the things I’m hearing is that people are less than enthused with all the new ‘features’ which seem custom made to take control away from you.
I bought a new Toyota Camry back in 2019. I’m really tempted to pop by the dealership and see what they’d offer.
Up until about two years ago I was traveling extensively for work, mostly flying, so I wound up using rental cars a lot. I rather quickly settled on a few preferred models that either didn’t have too many “assists,” or I knew how to dumb them up before leaving the rental lot.
Pretty much all of the features like “lane assist,” “auto brake” and “adaptive cruise control,” it seems to me, aren’t much help for a normal driver driving normally. Rather, they are for distracted or bad drivers, either through intrinsic behavior (for instance, using a cell phone, drinking coffee and putting their contact lenses in at the same time – yes, I’ve seen that), or exhausted. In those cases they may help, although likely not as much as putting the d*mn phone down or pulling over for a nap.
For the normal driver, instead, they either make a false prediction and startle the good driver, or are just plain annoying. And, to cap it off, in situations where they could actually be of real benefit to a good driver, for instance in a heavy rainstorm or snow, my experience is they tend to shut down because the sensors become obstructed.
The local Ford dealer’s lot is 2/3 empty and the used car dealers were looking lean today. I am glad I am not shopping for a car right now. OTOH the bicycle shortage may be easing because the used bike shop had decent inventory.
No way would I be putting a new addition to the fleet unless I absolutely had to right now. Wife and I both lucked out with purchasing our new vehicles, both of which could be sold for a profit right now.
My preferred local Ford dealer only has 60 cars (total, new and used combined) in stock. The GMC dealership we frequent for servicing my wife’s car regularly had 20-30 new GMC Terrains on the lot or in transit to the dealer in 19, right now they have 3.
I bought my new truck (a beauti-mous Ford Ranger XLT Crew Cab) at the right time, it was a courtesy loaner for 3 months before I bought it, 1700 miles on it when I bought it for just shy of $10k off sticker but still “new”. Current Carvana offer is $7k over what I paid and KBB Trade-In is $1k under sticker (Private Party/cash sale value is $3k over MSRP/sticker.
If I had a couple non-daily driver cars kicking around right now, I’d be sorely tempted to unload them and wait out the market.
I just had a thought about this. If there is a shortage of new and used vehicles what’s to stop people from selling vehicles that should be scrapped? Or what if they start repairing vehicles that are deemed “total loss“ because it’s now more economically viable?
Think about when a storm hits A lot of cars get flood damage and then their owners try to sell them to pass that problem to someone else.
I can easily see the market being flooded (no pun intended) with fucked up vehicles that should not be put for sale again. Or even parts shortages because A lot of the time if a part needs to be replaced it comes off another vehicle that was sent to the scrapyard. I don’t see it happening everywhere because some states to have a “lemon laws“ but I can see it happening.
I’d also imagine that parts repair/replacement is at an all time high. My local used car place is leaner than it’s ever been, and its small attached shop is backed up with repairs. Before 2/3 the cars disappeared from the lot, I could reliably hit them up with a same/next day job. But now it’s a 3-4 day wait before they even get to it
Supposedly the fact that a car was flooded or totalled is recorded on its title and tracked separately by VIN. Won’t help with spare parts, of course, or stop fraud, but…
I had just about convinced my wife we needed to buy a truck or big SU, this winter. Now, no way, if things get back to normal next spring, maybe. We have a Chevy Traverse that can tow our Michigan travel trailer but it has 130,000 miles on it. We don’t have a vehicle big enough to move our trailer in Florida. We store it at the RV park that we stay at but I cant move it elsewhere if we want. Somebody mentioned the bike shortage- it still exists, I’ve been looking for a particular model of a bike for over a year. I’ve called around the country and cant find it.