I am mindful of the current climate, the impact of COVID-19 and the bizarre socioeconomic and political situation, I understand these are unique times and no one has a crystal ball to predict the future. That being said, historically speaking, do German auto manufacturers provide better incentives in November, or do they provide better incentives in December ? How have you seen trends in the past years ? If one was ready to pull the trigger, seeing as we are at the butt end of Nov, should one wait until December or just do it now ?
I don’t have those historic data, but I suppose you could go on Edmunds and compare November 2019 with December 2019 for a bunch of different makes and models. When I did that with a BMW 5-Series, I saw no difference between the two months, but that’s a sample size of one.
If I were to have a crystal ball, here’s what I’d predict:
- I would be surprised if December programs got worse.
- If you’re after a specific configuration of a MY 2020 car (and production of 2020 models has stopped and 2021 programs are worse), then maybe November is a better idea – act before someone else buys your desired car.
- If the luxury brands are currently neck-in-neck in terms of YTD sales, maybe there will be a year-end push from the competing manufacturers to be #1, and volume bonuses might be stronger. But I don’t know if that’s the case this year.
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Keep in mind that incentives shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. Vehicles may be subvened in different ways at any given time; incentives, mf, and rv.
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Thanks, I will look into edmunds and see what comes about.
I actually looked into this the other day and looked at BMW specific for the past 2 years and December did see an increase in incentives compared to November both years. If you also look at the sales data you’ll see that December is the busiest month of the year meaning that there’s also the biggest number of lease returns this month as well.
The problem is that supply is lower than in previous years although it is improving. A manufacturer like BMW could keep the programs the same because of the smaller supply of vehicles on lots and risk losing customers that are returning their car to other manufacturers or they can improve incentives to increase sales since they’re still considerably lower than in years past due to Covid.
It’s a roll of the dice at this point but i’ve spoken to 4 people in the industry about this (2 brokers, 1 dealer, and someone that does industry data) and 2 say they think the programs won’t improve and 2 say they think they will. Regardless, nobody seems to think they’re going to get worse.
For example:
November 2019 X3M40i incentives = $1,250 lease credit + $1,500 loyalty
December 2019 X3M40i incentives = $2,750 lease credit + $1,500 loyalty
What did the RV and mf do during the same time?
Unchanged for that specific model.
November:
December:
Thanks @nycismone I appreciate the input, This has cemented the decision to wait until December.
I wonder if the inventory situation is going make this December an exception to the historical data.
All bets are off for 2020 IMO.
In years or decades past BMW and MB would use incentives to fight over meaningless titles such as “best selling luxury brand in America” … hard to imagine them doing that when they’re asking their govt for financial support
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This year it truly is a roll of the dice.