If you visit a Lincoln showroom right now, you might be surprised by how many of last year’s vehicles you’ll find selling new. And that’s got dealers doing everything they can to sell stock from the 2023 model year.
At the end of February, Lincoln reported that it had more than 33,000 vehicles on its lots nationwide, which is around three times as many as it had last year. That means that it has more than four months’ worth of inventory in showrooms, the most of any non-Stellantis brand in America. About a third of those vehicles are from the 2023 model year.
The head of the Lincoln National Dealer Council, Chris Poulos, told Autonews that a variety of factors have led to this situation, and he called it a “perfect storm” of challenges for the automaker.
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For one thing, supply lines are normalizing, which means that the factories can now build more vehicles after years of shortages. In addition, a backup camera-related stop sale on the Aviator that lasted months means that the SUV is now flooding onto dealer lots. A later-than-expected launch for the updated Corsair also played a role in this situation.
The result of this perfect storm is that about 40 percent of the vehicles that Poulos sold in February 2024 were from the 2023 model year. Other dealers are also working to get rid of older vehicles, as concerns about floorplan costs and an inability to market newer vehicles mount.
Nationwide, incentives for the Aviator, Nautilus, and Navigator have doubled, as compared to a year ago, and that appears to be working. Lincoln’s sales are up 29 percent in the first two months of 2024, which is much better than the wider luxury segment, where sales have only increased 3.4 percent.
Such is the glut of older vehicles, though, that Lincoln is reportedly turning to less above-board strategies. The automaker is shortening the amount of time 2023 vehicles have to spend in a dealer’s loaner program, from 6 months/3,000 miles to 20 days/500 miles.
While that may sound reasonable, two dealers who spoke to Autonews on condition of anonymity said that the program would allow Lincoln to artificially inflate its sales number, as the vehicles can be marked as sold as soon as they’ve gone through the program.
“They’re just trying to get you to report them sold,” a dealer said. “It’s just a way to pad the numbers; it makes your inventory not look as bad as it is.”
Lincoln’s president, Dianne Craig, said that the automaker is being careful about how it applies incentives, though. She said that the company is watching residual values, but that it is also poised for “significant growth” in 2024.
