New Cars in Short Supply Due to COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 is shaping up to be the year of shortages. You can now add new cars to the ever-growing list of things you can expect to find considerably less of in the foreseeable future.

Be it ammo, toilet paper, coffee, trees at garden nurseries, lumber, gaming consoles, you name it, all these various shortages are the residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest new car shortage could last for a few months, according to a story published with Dakota News Now.

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Shulte Subaru General Manager, Jason Hanson, told Dakota News Now, “When COVID hit, manufactures weren’t sure how many cars they should produce everybody wasn’t sure what to expect, so they produced less than they probably should have. The second thing is we have a microchip shortage going on that’s affecting all manufacturers. In a Subaru, there is 17 or 18 of those microchips in every single car they produce.”

Hanson told Dakota News Now, Shulte Subaru typically has about a 90-day supply of new vehicles on hand at any given time. Thanks to the current new car shortage, their inventory levels are expected to get down into the teens before inventory levels begin to improve, thus making the appearance of the car lot look quite a bit different over the coming months.

As Dakota News Now reports, the demand for used cars, especially those in good condition, is increasing as well.

Empire Auto Sales owner, Mike Wendt, told Dakota News Now, “Trade-ins are going up because of course, we need your cars, so if you got a car you want to trade-in, bring it in because we need it, older cars, newer cars whatever all over the board."

Due to the shortage, customers are finding the value of their used car in some cases to be worth several thousand dollars more than the vehicle would have booked out at even just 6 months ago.

Just like the housing market right now, it's proving to be a sellers market when it comes to used cars at the moment.

Now the question becomes, will you still be able to find your dream car on the lot when you decide to go car shopping? Let's hope so!

Source: Dakota News Now