Pat Devereux
A VOICE OF REASON IN THE LAND OF THE FREE PART 4: BUYING A CAR IN THE US
“Buying a new car can cost less than your electricity bill”
How does buying a car in the US difer from how we do it in the UK?
Cars are sold in the US like groceries. Instead of the UK process of poring over brochures, building countless models on confgurators, talking with your mates, reading TG and then venturing into the dealership to place an order for exactly the car you want, before waiting a couple of months or more for your car to be built and delivered, the US does it diferently. The day you need a new one, you just pop down to the local dealership and get a new one. End of.
Eh? But what if they haven’t got the car you want?
They very likely will 80 per cent of the time. Because the US is so huge, a majority of the car-buying population is nowhere near where the cars are made – look at Detroit, the home of carmaking in the US, and Los Angeles, the centre of car buying. They are 2,283 miles apart, which is over three times the distance between London and Munich. So to get around this logistical headache, dealers order and carry vast inventories of cars in a huge range of specs and in every colour of the rainbow.
Yes, but what if they don’t have the spec I want?
Technically you can still order it, but you will be strongly discouraged to do so by the dealer staf. Their mission is to get you into one of the cars already there. Not just because they want their commission today, but also to avoid having to pay the manufacturer for the car before they sell it. They get a fxed number of days to do this, so it saves them a fortune if they can keep moving the metal.
They can’t make me buy a car I don’t want
Oh yes they can. They have a few tricks up their corporate sleeves to make you do just that. The frst is to remind you that there is going to be a huge wait for your special car. That’s usually enough to dissuade most Americans who have been raised to expect near-instant gratifcation.
OK, I’m not American, that won’t work on me. What else?
Their next trick is price. There are so many ways the dealer can sweeten the deal that you could walk in wanting a truck and drive away in a convertible. Because the US car distribution system is far from perfect, there are thousands of extra cars sloshing around on dealer lots looking for a home, so carmakers will encourage dealers – who frankly don’t need much encouraging – to shift the cars at almost whatever price they can. Add this to all the issues like the end of the week/month/quarter sales targets, and you can see how deep discounting has become part of the fabric of US car buying.
But there are still cars I wouldn’t want to own at any price
True, but you probably wouldn’t mind borrowing one for a year or two if the price was right. Particularly if you lived in a house with a huge garage and great roads or trails nearby. Especially if it cost less than your electricity bill. That’s the story in the US, and that story’s fairy godmother, making all those motoring dreams come true, is leasing. With interest rates at record lows and car companies willing to price their leases to shift metal, it doesn’t matter what the sale price is, you can get some brandnew metal for almost no money.
Give me some examples
You can do a web search for all the manufacturer specials. But the real bargains are locally at the dealers. A Honda dealer earlier this year ofered a 36-month lease on a Civic for just £40 a month, which is amazing. However, if that was too small, the same dealer would also lease you a new Accord, for exactly the same price.
That’s absurd. Why don’t people just lease one of everything?
Many do just that. The UK buys one car per 30 of its people; the US buys around one per 19. So almost twice as many cars per head each and every year.
’Murica...
FTW!