For Groves, it seems that a metaphorical switch was flipped at the end of 2022, particularly in October and November.
“When you watch new-car lots — mine, anybody else’s — start to pick up on inventory, then you just know that the pendulum is going to swing back,” he said.
Slightly higher new-vehicle inventory in 2023 may ultimately provide a critical boost to the used market, said Thomas Castriota, dealer principal of Castriota Chevrolet in Hudson, Fla.
With new-vehicle production so snarled in 2020, 2021 and 2022, off-lease vehicles are not flowing back into the market. The loss of those vehicles in the used pipeline will be partly compensated when vehicles that are new today get traded in, Castriota told Automotive News.
But affordability concerns weigh heavily.
“In our particular store, we’re seeing more of our lease customers buying their cars, because they can’t afford a new lease payment at substantially more dollars than where they were maybe three or four years ago,” Castriota said.
The average consumer lives paycheck to paycheck, and most can’t afford the higher costs, he said.
Said Castriota: “If they’re living paycheck to paycheck, you can’t say ‘Well, now your payment is going to go up $300.’ That’s not in their economic sphere.”