If you’re looking to strike a deal, you’d better look elsewhere.
... [+]New-vehicle prices show no signs of retreating, as robust consumer demand and razor-thin dealer inventories continue to upend the industry. Time was when an astute haggler could strike a transaction price several hundreds of dollars below a new-car’s MSRP , but those days are long gone, with dealer markups now being the norm.
Automotive news reports that “unrelenting” microchip shortages kept another 96,700 vehicles out of production industry-wide last month. As an example, Ford says it has as many as 45,000 unfinished pickup trucks in inventory that won’t be completed by the end of September because of component scarcity.
As we all learned in Economics 101, the law of supply and demand dictates that when the former is low and the latter is more robust than can be fulfilled, prices go up. And with some new vehicles, that’sthe average new vehicle is selling for 10 percent above MSRP , with some of the newest and/or most popular models, including the new-for-2022 Ford Maverick compact pickup, exceeding that amount.
“Dealers have responded to market conditions by pricing cars above MSRP making a higher profit on specific models to help offset lower sales volumes from restricted new car production,” says iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer. “In today’s market, consumers are willing to pay well-above sticker price for new cars because inventory is so scarce and because they know that new car pricing is not expected to improve until 2023 at the earliest.