One of the factors fueling new-car price rises over the past couple of years has been a lack of supply as production bottlenecks limited the number cars that could be built and vehicle inventories fell to sometimes dangerously low levels.
But automakers and dealers will be breathing a sigh of relief at the news that new-vehicle inventory is at its highest point for almost two years. Data from Cox Automotive suggests the U.S. new-car inventory stands at 1,893,855 vehicles, which is equivalent to a 56 day supply and approximately 70 percent up on where it stood at this time last year.
And that increase in supply has resulted in better deals for buyers. Cox’s analysts said they’d noticed more discounts and incentives being offered and claim that the two-year trend of Americans paying above MSRP has ended (though not if you’re hoping to buy a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170).
Related: Dodge Dealers Asking From $100K To $250K Over MSRP For Challenger SRT Demon 170!
But Cox’s team warned that although inventory levels are substantially higher than they were in 2022, they’re still way down on pre-pandemic numbers. In March 2019 the U.S. had a supply of 3.98 million vehicles that would be sufficient to see it though 94 days.
The study reveals that other than low-volume, high-performance cars, the vehicles that had the lowest supply were subcompact, compact and midsize cars, followed by minivans, and compact and subcompact SUVs. The highest supply is held by a mix of domestic brands (the Stellantis companies topping the table) plus various luxury automakers. But not all luxury brands are faring well. Cox says Lexus has under 30 days supply and BMW and Land Rover aren’t flush with cars either.
Trucks, though – those things seem to multiply like rabbits. According to Cox’s figures the Ram 1500 had 102 days of supply, Ford’s F-150 had around 80-90 days, and GM even idled two full-size truck plants to reduce inventory levels.
