New vehicle dealer inventory once again climbed in June, with 2.96 million vehicles just sitting on lots. That works out to about a 76-day supply, and it’s up from 2.89 million vehicles a month earlier. It’s also a million more vehicles than where it was at the same time last year – 1.95 million.
No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of cars on dealer lots, but it’s not unprecedented. For over four years now dealer inventory has been below 3 million vehicles, according to Automotive News. You can thank the pandemic for that. It should be noted that the June numbers do not factor in the impact the CDK dealer software outage had on the market in the second half of the month.
As far as inventories go, Asian automakers seem to have the lowest supply, AutoNews reports. Meanwhile, Stellantis’ brands have the highest, with Jeep and Ram both having a nearly five-month supply of vehicles on dealer lots. Woof.
Supply also seems to vary greatly depending on the price of the vehicle. AutoNews says vehicles that cost between $20,000 and $30,000 have a 61-day supply. At the same time, vehicles that cost between $60,000 and $80,000 can sit on a lot for about 97 days. Here’s more on the supply surplus dealers are facing, from Automotive News:
Among the seven automakers reporting monthly sales and inventory, only Mazda North America saw its days’ supply decrease in June from the previous month, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, with Toyota Motor North America the only automaker among the seven to report less than a one-month supply.
The seven automakers collectively had a 36-day supply of cars and a 54-day supply of light trucks, both up sharply from the previous month, according to the data center.
This larger inventory is probably why we are seeing a good deal of incentives being thrown on new cars right now. Sure, levels aren’t quite back to pre-pandemic numbers, but no dealer wants to be sitting on this many unsold cars.