What Really Happens To All The Cars That Never Get Sold?

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Buying a new car can be a huge pain. Depending on the dealership and a litany of other factors, it can be a long and arduous process to get yourself into a new vehicle, or in the worst-case scenario, reevaluate your car search. At the end of the day, it’s a necessary evil. Provided you paid the price you’re comfortable with and you got the car you wanted, you get to drive home happy, and the salesperson got to make a sale. Selling as many cars as possible is how most dealerships keep the lights on and stay profitable.

If a car is very popular or in high demand, like say a Ford F-150 Lightning, the dealership doesn’t have to do a lot of work to get the car off the lot and make room for more inventory. But occasionally a car will sit unsold at a dealership for an extended period of time. If it’s a reputable dealership, the vehicle will be mechanically fine, but it could just be in an unpopular specification or color. A two-wheel drive truck is perfectly suited for a number of applications but might be a hard sell for climates where it snows a lot. What happens to the cars that languish in dealership lots for weeks or months on end? 

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In short, the dealership will do its best to sell the car and get it off the lot. The car takes up precious inventory space that could be used to sell more popular cars. According to J.D. Power, a dealership may resort to a number of different tactics to get the car into the driveway of a satisfied customer. Management may offer bonuses to whoever can sell the car. An experienced salesperson may wait until the right customer comes along to sell the car. 

On the other hand, a less experienced or less scrupulous salesperson may try to offer the used Plymouth Prowler that’s been sitting on the lot for months to a mom who just wants a Chevy Traverse. If that fails, the dealership may use the car as a loaner or demonstrator model to have around to show perspective customers certain features, according to J.D. Power.

If worse comes to worst and the dealership has absolutely no luck in selling a particular car, it may resort to auctioning the car off to wholesalers who themselves have a network of buyers and dealerships at the ready. It may not be worth a Chevy dealership’s time to sell a brown two-wheel drive-only Equinox with no options to speak of, but it may be the exact car someone is looking for, so the car is going to get sold, it’s only a matter of time.