This winter may be a good time to buy a new car.

[randomness]

Winter is usually a slow time for car dealers, so it's often a good time for a buyer to drive a hard bargain. This winter looks like it'll be even better than usual, because those dealers are lean and hungry.

From http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/auto-sales-tank.html:

Auto sales, which were weak over the past 11 months, simply went into freefall in September:

• Ford Motor posted a 34% drop. Their truck and van sales fell 39%, SUV sales plummeted 57% and F-series truck sales dropped 42%.


• Honda reported a 24% decline in sales;


• Toyota U.S. Sept. sales drop 32.3%, light truck sales dropped 38%


• Lexus sales -- Toyota's luxury nameplate -- fell 37.7%;


• Chrysler U.S. September sales fall 33%


• Volvo sales slumped 51.8%;


• Porsche tumbled 45%;


• General Motors sales down 15.6% (better than the expectations of -26%)

According to the Detroit Free Press, the seasonally adjusted annual SAAR for the past decade has ranged between 14 million and 17 million vehicles. Since December, the SAAR has been in a free-fall, and September now looks like its going to hit 13 million annualized sales. Edmonds.com noted that the last time fewer than 1 million new vehicles were sold in a month was February 1993.

In a related Reuters story, a new study says that nearly 1 in 5 car dealerships could fail.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I understand, it's a choice. I just want to make clear that different choice is possible. You do need to pick the right used car, though.

My $1,900 car doesn't look very pretty--friends make fun of it, and Homeland Security gives me trouble at the border when I drive it back from Canada--but I've put 220,000 miles on it in the last nine years. As for days of my life driving, and dark roads late at night alone: I just took it to Ohio and back, including driving over the Allegheny Mountains between midnight and 3AM. I'm hoping to drive it across the continent again soon. It rocks.

(My $1,000 car is still running but thirty years old. It deserves a rest from long-haul driving.)

To most Americans, I'm crazy. I'm comfortable with that.