Price Cutting Storm IN Canada
Phil Edmonston, long the bane of car manufacturers and dealers, has good news for both buyers and sellers this year.
Right now, says the longtime consumer advocate and author of the popular Lemon-Aid series, in Vancouver promoting his latest books, we have the "perfect storm" for car buying, as a result of three events.
First, Chrysler, recently bought by Cerberus, has initiated aggressive price-cutting. Edmonston opened a paper to an ad showing a new
PT Cruiser selling for $13,888. Not long ago the same vehicle was selling for much more, he says.
This price-cutting is putting pressure on other automakers to do the same. He points out another ad for an extended model new '07 GM minivan for $18,000.
"That's unheard of. These are normally around $22,000 to $23,000. What's happened is there is a great deal more competition than ever before."
Second, high fuel prices have "just whip-sawed larger vehicles into tens of thousands of dollar reductions" to try to move them. "When you get that kind of reduction, you can buy a whole lot of gas," he says.
Third, the higher value of the loonie should give us more buying power here in Canada and certainly south of the border, where 112,000 Canadians went in 2006 to buy new or used vehicles. However, because of issues like paperwork and non-transferrable warranties, Edmonston does not believe it's worth it to go to the States for a car purchase under $30,000 or so.
Here in Canada, the higher loonie will bring lower prices by giving the dealers and manufacturers a larger margin to sweeten rebates to the consumer and augment sales incentives to dealers.
When prices go down on new cars, it pushes the price down on used cars too.
Read more at
Car buyers' 'perfect storm'
Source: Canada.com