By Steven Symes 
With plenty of talk about 25 percent tariffs levied against imported new cars, enough people have reportedly taken to panic shopping. The run on vehicles has apparently impacted both the new and used vehicle supply in the US.
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This is all according to a new report from CNBC, which cites data gathered by Cox Automotive. The latter claims dealers had an average of 91 days’ supply of new cars at the beginning of March and just 70 days’ supply by the end of the month.
When it came to used vehicles, the supply went from 43 days to 39 from the beginning to end of March. The dip in both new and used cars is being attributed to panic shopping as people fear there won’t be enough rides to buy once the pre-tariffs supply runs out.
In other words, we’re experiencing something similar to the 2020 toilet paper panic shopping, although maybe not quite as ridiculous.
Johnathan Smoke, chief economist for Cox, said the drop in supply “was one of the largest drops we’ve seen in several years.” In other words, it’s not unprecedented, but it does appear at least some people are scooping up vehicles in anticipation of some shortage.
This development comes after we’ve seen dealers hiding overflow inventory in parking garages and private lots and automakers have so many vehicles at factory storage areas production has been cut or even periodically idled.
But Cox says new car sales are up 22 percent for the seasonally adjusted pace of last year and 8 percent based on pure volume. We’re not sure if that means anyone should be screaming the sky is falling, but it is an interesting situation.
Perhaps there’s a silver lining here as dealers have plenty of 2023 and 2024 models sitting on their lots or in off-site inventories. They might be able to pawn those rides off on people who are convinced everything is coming apart and there will be no tomorrow.
Image via Stellantis