Featured Anybody Bought a Car Lately?

You can read all about it online. Used car prices have tanked, they are worth considerably less today then 2 months ago with no signs of changing. To add to that and make it a double whammy, the used car market depends on auctions to move vehicles around as well as re-incorporate fleet vehicles like rental cars which are also now idle, there is a stockpile of used useless vehicles. Once the auctions open up, there will be way more supply than anybody wants. I expect boatloads of cars will sail across the Atlantic into Africa to essentially be dumped.

New car prices are so far unchanged on paper. But dealers are working pretty crazy deals and discounts.

What I love the most, is this has finally forced dealerships into an online model. The "Tesla Model". I can email a dealership get a price, pay, and have the car delivered all while sitting on my couch now. I am hoping that they will eventually cut out all the BS completely and just offer a price. Or better yet, have the manufactures start direct selling again. If I want a new Prius, buy from Toyota.com. Specify what I want exactly, have it built just for me, and show up at my door. No dealership required. It may not happen this time, but during "wave 2", maybe...

 

Hey, I don't know. But I'm sure if you contacted a dealership/salesman, they are going to tell you it's the best time in recorded human history to buy a car.
Then they are going to try to undervalue your trade in, and make a really healthy profit margin for themselves.

My admittedly cynical evaluation is that dealerships always operate under the aura that NOW is the best time to buy a car. I'm sure sales are down, but I don't necessarily buy the logic that because the snake hasn't been fed and is hungrier it's going to be a better snake to deal with.

If you're looking for a car? My advice would be check/compare prices as you would ANYTIME, don't count on this crisis guaranteeing you a good deal, regardless of what you may be told or hear.

 

Or "Region" involved. In December 2016, I had to fly to Rhode Island to buy the Prius Prime I wanted. It was SouthEast Toyota region that stood in the way.

Bob Wilson

 

a few people in cali looking for primes have said no dice

 

And if you have an external camera, like a Ring doorbell, you can sit on your couch and watch the car sitting in your driveway as it depreciates!

Mike

 

It only depreciates when you sell it. Depreciation, is "Schrodinger's cat."

Bob Wilson

 

Last weekend I worked on a Prius in the high demand Portland, Oregon market for a guy who got a really clean low mileage 2009 with red triangle on for $3700. That's the kind of price you see in rural midwest and deep south where Prius aren't in demand. And lucky for him the only problem with car was the voltage sensor harness went bad with corrosion and fried the battery ECU. So $50 for brand new wire frame senor harness and $50 for a used ECU and a few days of reconditioning and he's very please with his car he just bought.

I'm amazed at the price because out on the west coast you see lots of low mileage 2009 Prius with no warning lights still selling for $8K... But I guess those days are finally over?

Not many are like him though... I mean you got have lots of balls to drive two hours away from home during a Pandemic and try to drive a near broken down used car. But he had a co-pilot clearing warning lights for him as he drove and just barely made it my house on Friday night and picked up his car on Monday. It was actually the cleanest Gen2 I've ever worked on.

 

Banks have stopped lending money for the most part .... what do you think .... cash buyers pulling out money for a car? Note hardly.
.

 

Trade-ins have dropped too, from local reports. So, you might save on your new car, but won't get as much for the old one. Need to do the sums.

 

New car sales were declared non-essential in our original shutdown order (Washington State), and were forced to halt. Auto repair and maintenance is essential and is continuing. My spouse's daily driver was overdue for regular maintenance service (by calendar), and did get it.

Somewhere there was a note that car sales are allowed here in certain cases, such as replacements for totaled vehicles, providing transportation to essential workers with no other means of transport, completing sales that were pending prior to March 23, extending expiring leases, etc. Only one employee can be present in the showroom or dealer office at any time, and only during the sale itself.

If any subsequent updates opened things up, I missed it.

 

Interesting... I read through the whole 17 page list of essential services when it came but didn't realize that... I guess that explains why dude who's Prius I fixed last weekend had to drive 2 hours south to Oregon.

Pandemic governance is a trip... Every government in the world are muddling their way through it. Like gardening, which is my main focus. In Washington state, if I'm planting vegetable gardens for people it's an essential service, but if I'm mowing a lawn, or weeding or pruning, it's not. All the lawns around the state capital haven't been mowed in weeks... The dandelions are loving it... They're making so many seeds!!!

 

Vegetable gardens do provide food, thus are essential, especially if these restrictions will extend long.

But my neighbors' lawn guy has still been mowing for them. And I still see other lawn and landscape services operating while we out on bike rides(*).


(*) Inslee did declare walking/running/hiking/biking as essential for mental and physical health, and we are making considerable use of the walking and biking. But we are staying away from the usual high use paths.

 

Around Groton ma, landscapers makes up a lot of the traffic here.
The service I use, came a week ago, each of the guys came in separate cars, did some chit-chatting on their phones, got out and went to work on different parts of the lawn. Earliest spring clean up yet.

 

O yeah , I did trade in my prius prime for a model 3.

Just needed that bigger battery.

Made the order in the beginning of January. They still don't have an inventory, they make to order.

So, I didn't get my car till the middle of march. Picked it up about the same time Tesla announced that the factories where shutting down.

Now, I got my BEV when gas prices (futures anyway) go negative.

And no place to go to (in my new car)....

 

Yea... And now construction workers can go back to work, but lawnmower and gardening folks are still driving their rigs around illegally hoping they don't get caught. I'm fortunate because all my tools fit in my Prius and this time of year it's just weed pulling so I can keep a low profile. One thing I love about right now is all the dim-witted tree killing crews can't work and I love the feeling that if I see a crew doing a senseless trees removal I can stop and tell them they're getting shut down and stand their and call the cops on them if they don't stop working. I know all the tree butchering companies in my town and I intend to use my new found power to stop their deforestation every chance I get. So far, haven't seen a single one of them.

 

As one subject to a microburst on the 13th with 8 trees within reach of my house down, I'm just waiting for a crew to remove the debris next week and take a few more that threaten the house. Had one on the roof last year to the tune of $18k.

Restrictions are not uniform throughout the country.

 

Re car maintenance. In NC car inspections by state licensed franchises are still mandatory even if school is called off for the year.

Inspection was a 1 minute job, I never got out of the car, He inspected everything with me pushing the buttons. Both of us wore masks and gloves.

I followed a Cadillac SUV down the street on the way. Right brake light on at 35 MPH, center brake light on, left brake light out. I noticed his front wheel covered with brake dust.

 

topic drift, but all the landscapers and building contractors around here are working, except for one city that has shut down residential construction.
i have not seen any social distancing amongst contractors

 

The neighbor across the street has a son who works as a contractor for the state repairing/rebuilding freeway bridges. The company that he works for agreed to conform to the social distancing rules while continuing the work. A motorist took pictures and reported them for having employees not wearing masks and not maintaining the 6' separation. They were kicked off the job. Ohio is pretty serious about the social distancing.