Looking at plug in hybrids and I’m seeing a ton of previous model year Grand Cherokees, Hornets, and Tonales, some of which have a few thousand miles on them. They’ve clearly been listed for well over a year so what happens to them if they don’t sell? Do they get wholesaled out? Just sit on them in hopes they do eventually sell? How do dealers generally handle this?
In the case of the Grand Cherokees, used examples with the same mileage are ~$10k less expensive than the “new” ones with mileage—to my non-dealer mind, that’s clearly market rate for them, so why don’t dealers acknowledge this and sell at or near the market price?
Its not that common. Many get to sell them off as CPOs. That BMW just had bad luck as the dealer was dumb, design changed, programs ended for rebates support and to top it all off, the entire staff was just using the enormous back seat for date nights…
With non luxury brand cars, chances of selling as CPO is much higher due to prices being much less than a high end luxury car and also a much more bigger audience.
IDK about right now because of so much uncertainty in both the industry itself and corporate buyers’ ability to get financing, but historically dealers like this have always had an implicit put option: sell the dealership itself. Right now all bets are off.
The proverbial mom and pop dealership was seeing big generational change (owners passing away or retiring) and quite a large fraction of the next generation who inherited control did not know how to run the business.
It’s an interesting topic but if your goal is to get a car in your driveway then unfortunately this discussion won’t really help you. Choose a much more effective and scalable approach: know what your target is for a new car (ask if you don’t) and make lots of offers.
Searching for loaners and fine-tuning how much to offer for each one, that’s a way more time-consuming approach. And way less effective if the owners have this obsolete stock precisely because they never accept “reasonable” offers.
