New Cars Sold Used Cars For Sale

Washington DC August 5, 2005; The AIADA newsletter reported that record-breaking sales months spurred by the onslaught of domestic manufacturer Employee Pricing discounts have in turn swamped dealer lots with late model used car trade-ins, reports USA Today.

Now that Ford, Chrysler, and GM have each extended their deals, originally slated to end last Monday, dealers are pondering the next round of discounts needed to help them trim bloated inventories of used cars. While the deals were hugely successful in clearing showrooms of new cars -- about 1.8 million cars were sold last month alone, up 16.2 percent from July ’04 -- generally 60 percent of new car buyers are trading in their old vehicles at the time of purchase.

Dealers are in motion on plans to slash their used car inventories, reports USA Today. ”We’re going to have big used car sales this month. We have to. We don’t have anything else to sell," says Jack Fitzgerald, owner of Fitzgerald Auto Malls in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida, and a director on the board of the American International Automobile Dealers Association. “Jerry Seiner, who sells General Motors brands and imports at four locations in Utah, says he increased used car advertising at the end of June when his inventory doubled due to trade-ins.

As a result, Seiner sold 135 used cars last month compared with 71 in June -- "probably our best used car month ever."”