TTAC Rewind: How Has the Pandemic Changed Car Shopping?
Bark opined back in May of 2020 about how the pandemic would change car buying. Now that we're approaching three years on and we're living something resembling normalcy, was he right?
Did what he predicted become your lived experience as a customer or dealer employee? Was he off base? If he was right or wrong, explain why.
Lots of us made similar predictions back in 2020, and it's interesting to check in three years on and see if we were right or wrong. Spend your Sunday afternoon noodling on it.
See you tomorrow.
[Image: hedgehog94/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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I would rephrase: "How Has the Pandemic management Changed Car Shopping?"
Needed (not wanted) a truck in January of 22, which was a terrible time to be in the market. Perused the crap out of AutoTrader and finally found a resonablly-priced truck 600 miles from home. Spent $500 on the travel back and forth, saved at least $3000, likely more, over trying to buy local.
We stumbled upon a stray, unclaimed Santa Fe Limited in March 2022 and bought it on the spot (after test drive). Nobody else had any inventory, let alone exactly what we wanted.
Paid MSRP, 0%/48, no monkey business. First time for all of that.
I had been looking at ZR2's for a while. Pre-pandemic one could find a 2 - 3k discount. That dried up during the pandemic. I wanted a diesel and since GM was stopping production July 1st 2022 I was stuck with what ever I could find. I was fortunate to find a blue diesel ZR2 with base level trim, no markups and amazingly no dealer add-ons.