Spring and summer may be good times to buy a car as manufacturers overcome pandemic-related supply issues, but remember, good is relative.
Yes, prices have come down from their pandemic peaks but if you haven’t walked into a dealership since early 2020, the prices you see will be “eye-popping,” said Pat Ryan, chief executive of CoPilot, an AI-assisted car-shopping app. New car prices are up 29% since March 2020 and used car prices up 34% since March 2020, both outpacing overall inflation of 23%, he said.
If you can accept that higher car prices are simply “the new normal,” Ryan maintains that the next several months will be prime buying season, with new cars providing the best value if you can afford it.
“Used (cars) can only go down so far because during the pandemic, we produced 10 million less cars than we normally would,” Ryan said. On the other hand, automakers are churning out more cars with supply chains normalizing.
Why can new cars be a better value?
If you can afford to pay more for a new car, they could offer better value because manufacturers are producing more cars than people want so they’re offering more incentives, Ryan said.
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As an example, he said you would expect to pay $0.63 on the dollar of the original sticker price for a used car. Now that’s probably around $0.80. “So, the price is very high versus historically, so why not get A new one with more features,”…
