What's up everybody? Welcome to the second episode of the car dealership guy podcast. I am your host, car dealership guy. I can't believe we made it to number two. Here we are. It was very overwhelmed by the results of the first one. So thank you for the support. Thank you for sharing, for listening. It's truly remarkable. I never imagined that after one nine minute episode, we'd make it to the top charts and the leisure category of Apple Podcast number one within 72 hours. So you know, it gives me motivation and excites me to do more of these, to share what I'm seeing on the ground floor, to talk about the data in the industry and without further ado, let's jump right into it.
Today I want to talk about what is happening between the new and used car vehicle segment. Specifically, what is the current trends mean for consumers? As a consumer, should you buy a new car or use car and as a dealer, what should you expect? What is happening on both sides of the spectrum?
Let's start with new car. I got to tell you, at a very high level, I'm seeing some things that I like on the new car side, some things that are improving. So first of all, let's just talk about overall supply. New car inventory, right? Our new vehicle inventory is up 70% year over year. So obviously, it's a very, very, very good trend.
Last year, at this time, we had about a million units available. Right now, we're at about 1.7 million. So it's a great improvement. I think the downside here is that we're still down nearly 50% since 2019. And again, I'm sure that's not shocking.
But the key here is that everything I'm mentioning is not equally distributed across the board. Because what we're seeing is that there are certain OEMs that still have crazy shortages while others have rebounds significantly. And at a high glance, we're seeing that the domestics, right? So maybe Stellantis, which is Chrysler Dodge, Fiat, or if we're seeing Ford GM, we're seeing that the domestics have rebounded really well with inventory, whereas the Asian brands be maybe Toyota, Honda, Kia, they're still very much struggling.
I think the highlight with the Asian brands is Toyota, right? Because I should I say the low light, because they're struggling the most. And they've stated several times that they're working on their supply. I think last August, they stated that they predicted that their supply would rebound within a year. Then in January, they said, we're working on it and we're hoping to have it fixed as soon as possible. They even mentioned it at NADA to their dealers. NADA is a dealer convention.
But I think the bottom line is Toyota has still not fixed their supply situation. And it's now starting to really bite them into ass. Why is that? Well, they're losing market share, bottom line. I tweeted yesterday that Tesla actually gained the most market share in Q1, which was specifically, they gained 1.4% market share in the industry.
So if you think about all the cars in industry and vehicles in the road will test less the one that has put the most vehicles sold the most vehicles and are gaining market share, whereas Toyota is actually losing a lot of market share, where they dropped 2% from about 15.2 in 2022 to 13.2% now in Q1. And so when people tell me, oh, but Cardiola Shabgai, Toyota's due to juicester profits. And yeah, like I get it. And it makes sense to think that okay, they're due this because it's helping their their profit situation and you know, they are making more money per car, right? People are paying markups and whatnot.
But I got to tell you like, I don't know what that conversation is in that boardroom. This is not a good long term strategy. I have people in my DMs, you know, there's a Mazda dealer in my DMs that is telling me, hey, you don't understand how many Toyota customers were converting. It's crazy because people can get their Toyota's. And so there's trying new brands, right? Toyota historically has a cult following, right?
On the other hand, I have a Toyota dealer from Tennessee that DM me this morning. And he's telling me, listen, like we do not have inventory on a lot. We've sold out every single new car on the lot, right? That is like unfathomable. If we have to go back three years and imagine that there would be a new car store without one car in our lot, let alone Toyota, right? With all their their brand equity and their cult following, I mean, it almost doesn't make sense.
But I think this is the reality of the situation. And again, Toyota, Kia, Lexus, Honda, they are by far have the lowest supply availability in the market today. Subaru and Land Rover are right behind them. But still, they by far lead the way. I would say on the flip side, when we look at who has the most supply, again, as I mentioned, you're seeing Chrysler, you're seeing Volvo, you're seeing Buick, you're seeing Jeep, Alpha. And so again, completely different end of the spectrum, these brands, on the other hand, we're seeing some positive trends evolve, right?
We're seeing better incentives being offered. We're seeing consumers buying the vehicles below with no markups at MSRP. And of course, as I said, with depending on the incentives, it can even below a summer P at some points.
And so overall, the supply situation on the new side, I would say, is improving on an average across the industry, we're seeing cars sell closer to MSRP or specifically 100% of MSRP, right? Which has not been the case for a while. We've been the industry's been selling cars for 100 and 200, 300, 400% of MSRP. So the closer you get to being at 100%, all it means that you're selling the car for the asking price.
We're seeing incentives as a percentage of asking price, sorry, incentives as a percentage of transaction price actually creep up quarter over quarter, from about 2% to 3%. So again, it means consumers are getting an overall better deal on that car. And we're seeing supply just go up. And so that's what we want to see.
Again, ideally, we'd like to see it evenly distributed across the board. Although right now, that is just not the case. And time will tell how quickly Toyota can fix its issues because it's been making these claims. We haven't seen too much yet.
The last thing I'll say before I flip over to the new side is that you have to remember that even when Toyota starts fixing their stock and their issues, you're not going to see dealers with lots of cars flooding or Toyota dealers, specifically lots of cars flooding their lots right away. And the reason for that is because so many vehicles will arrive pre-sold. And so one of their executives, and I quote said, we'd much rather park them, the cars and customers drive ways as opposed to a dealer's lot.
And there's truth to that because there's such a backlog of customer demand for these Asian brands that the realistic situation is going to be that even when supply starts rebounding significantly, it's first going to go right to customers' driveways.
And so my takeaway when the new car side is that, things are improving overall, there's some brands where you can get some deals nowadays. You know, lots of franchise dealers are happy that they have more supply to offer and they're able to sell these cars at more competitive prices. But again, it's not evenly distributed across the board. And time will tell when that gets better.
Now, let's flip over to the new side. You know, I'm not too thrilled about what's happening on the new side. As you all know, I am a use car dealer. I am specifically focused on the use car segment. And things are not too hot right now.
You know, last episode I mentioned that supply was at 2.2 million in vehicles. And in use, I mentioned that there are 2.2 million vehicles in dealer inventories, right? Use vehicles available for sale in the US. Well, guess what? Since the last episode, that's actually dropped. It is not 2.07 million vehicles in dealer inventories.
So supply use car supply has actually gotten worse. Now, what are the ramifications of that? Well, use car dealers are continuing to struggle to source the cars they need to sell. Things are not improving there. And specifically, when we look at cars below $20,000, which a major portion of the market wants, we are not we're not able to source these cars, right?
I mentioned that every dealer and their mother is competing for that car from the from the auction or, you know, from the public, right? When we advertise, we will buy your car. It's really, really difficult to source these cars. And remember, as use car dealers, we don't have all fleece inventory. And so it's even tougher because you don't have that guaranteed flow of inventory that's coming back from consumers.
So I would say that's at a glance the situation of use car supply, right? You're seeing that the lowest they supply, really meaning the least amount of inventory available to meet the demand is on the low end, say cars under $20,000.
As you go up in the price ranks, there's more inventory available. Of course, you know, it's less affordable and there's just less demand for it. With that said, I would say the biggest struggle in the market right now continues to be the subprime consumers and dealers that cater to subprime consumers, right? Which is many and I would say most use car dealers have a higher percentage of subprime or near prime consumers.
And so when you think about, you know, there's you have the franchise dealers, right? You have the corporate stores, think the car max is the sonic on motives and whatnot. And then you have just independent dealers, not not affiliated, no franchise. And so these are the brands that typically the the independence that are not affiliated with the franchise have a larger percentage of subprime consumers relative to their overall customer base.
It just that's just the way the car business has been for a while. And yes, there's some exceptions, but that's typically where the subprime consumers and the purchasing and also the big driver for that is that many subprime consumers, you know, given the rates that they have to pay relative to the prices of cars, a flock and gravitate towards a use car, which tends to be cheaper. And so it sort of all makes sense that way, right?
But I got to tell you, lending is really not getting any better. It's actually getting worse. And specifically, we're seeing that, you know, the large lenders think the publicly traded lenders, just auto lenders, that is they continue to just tighten their standards, you know, maybe the cap capital ones, the Santander's and many, many others, but they are not making it easy for consumers or subprime say, you know, consumer consumers with a 620 credit score below roughly speaking and a dealer to get these cars on the road.
但我必须告诉你,贷款情况真的没有变得更好,事实上是变得更糟了。具体来说,我们看到大型贷款机构,特别是上市的汽车贷款机构,仍在收紧他们的标准,例如 Capital One、桑坦德等等,他们并不容易让消费者或者620左右的信用评分以下的次级消费者和经销商购买这些车辆上路。
I would I will tell you that there is one exception, which is ally. So ally is surprisingly, they're buying pretty well right now in this market. And I would say better than their competition, right? The ally has a program, which I've actually written a newsletter about called ally plus.
And ally plus is pretty much a program that caters towards, you know, lower credit consumers. And it's saying they're in 2022, they bought a lot deeper than they are now, but still relatively to their peers, ally right now is buying a bit deeper than everyone else.
Now they're still being a lot more disciplined. I don't think this is something to be alarmed about because it's, you know, their volumes and everything is still lower overall. They just have a program that is, you know, catering to this specific segment of consumers, which is it's doing pretty well as a dealer, I would say, because again, it's something that enables us to actually get auto loans done. And get consumers, you know, being again, financed.
So it is, I'll keep you posted on how that program evolves, but so far it's definitely been, you know, ally has been stealing the show as a recent, whereas, you know, prior to 2023, it was the case, it was more so capital one in Santander from our perspective.
The one other thing I'll say on the use car front, and again, specifically, I want to touch on the cars under $20,000 is that we're seeing that customers, because of the desperation for this type of inventory, people are trying to, you know, internally, they're trying to rush our reconditioning department to get these cars, right?
So let me kind of walk you through dealership dynamics, right? But you have a reconditioning or service department, which gets the cars ready. And of course, you have a sales department, which needs the cars to sell. And there's this, you know, kind of friction between the two, because, you know, sales always wants the cars completed as fast as possible, and the service department's job is to, you know, complete the car up to the required standards to make sure that we sell a great car.
Now, this is not to mean that sales doesn't want to sell a great car. Of course, they do, because guess who gets the headache if the customer has an issue after the sale, the sales team does. But the sales team, you know, it is, of course, they are, it isn't their best interest to get that car out as quickly as possible and get into the customer.
And the interesting thing lately, I was actually touring yesterday our reconditioning center with the team. We were walking around looking through, you know, all the different inventory and some of our data and really just what's happening, you know, you know, the fine points of what's driving our current inventory performance and whatnot.
And one thing that was really interesting is that the sales team was pretty much kept telling us, but you know, the management that, hey, these cars are, you know, the cars that were below 20 grand or say even below 18 grand to be more specific, these cars are pretty much sold, right? And so, yeah, I understand that there's, you know, a little dent on the bottom left panel on the door.
But guess what? It really doesn't matter too much because the customer is aware of it. And they, or they will be aware of it. And they really don't mind. They need the car. It's much more important to them right now than waiting to fix a little dent and it's a used car at the end of the day.
And so, you know, it just shows you that, yes, you know, we have very tight standards and we have a reconditioning operation, which takes recon very, very seriously. Again, we've been in business for well over a decade and our reputation is built by the, you know, big part of the quality of inventory we sell.
But I think as a consumer, I would be very weary in the market nowadays because, you know, there's definitely some fly-by-not operation, fly-by-night operations out there or even, you know, just private people selling cars in those price ranges.
And even though you may be really, you know, needing that car, you should just be careful about the standards of the reconditioning out there because in this market, when things are sold, before they even get to the lot in those price ranges, you know, not everyone is going to do the right thing.
And it could result in, you know, cars that maybe have more issues than if we were on a different market when there was a plethora of inventory and everyone was really fighting on quality and service.
But with that said, I'm going to wrap it up for today.
然而,我要在此结束今天的讲话。
Again, just to sum it up, seeing some positive things on the new car front, seeing inventory rebound 50% year over a year, although still down, still down relative to 2019, as I mentioned earlier, seeing incentives rise, seeing M.S. Markups decline, again, not evenly distributed across the board, of course, because not everyone has inventory.
On the use car front, not seeing things that I like to see at all inventory, continues to get tighter down from 2.2 million cars available last week down to 2.07.
在使用汽车方面,我没有看到我想看到的所有库存,库存继续从上周的220万辆汽车减少到207万辆。
This week, also seeing lending continue to tighten up, although there are, you know, a couple exceptions, as I mentioned, such as Ally, who's doing well on the subprime front.
本周,我们看到贷款继续紧缩,尽管有一些例外,如我所提到的Ally,他们在次级信贷方面做得不错。
And overall, really fighting tooth and nail to make sure that we can get enough inventory to maintain our numbers and to continue growing, although I will tell you, it's just really, really difficult.
And you can bet you that if we're declining on a top line in this market, then other use car dealers are as well.
你可以肯定,如果我们在这个市场的销售额有所下降,那么其他二手车经销商也是如此。
And overall, it's going to be, it's not going to be, you know, too fun over the next couple weeks, couple of months, but, you know, we just got to keep going and keep focusing on the customer experience, on efficiencies and make the best out of it.So thanks for joining me.