Car Deals and Incentives – July 2010

June 23, 2010

July 2010 Car Deals We post this type of article just about every month for those people who are looking for car incentives, rebates, and deals for the next month — in this case, July 2010.

Like always, car manufacturers never, ever announce new incentives until old incentives expire. In the case of the current June 2010 programs, most expire on July 6, 2010, right after the July 4th holiday. They don’t even announce new incentives to their dealers any earlier. That way, they can keep the old programs alive up to the last day.

How can we know if the July incentives, rebates, 0% APR interest loans, and special lease deals are going to be as good, or better than the old incentives? We can’t. However, we can make some good educated guesses based on our experience and knowledge of what drives incentives.

We know, for example, that car sales nearly always slow down in summer. People are taking vacation, the kids are out of school, the weather is hot, and gas prices go up due to heavier demand. Although sales are slow, which would ordinarily imply that car makers would throw incentive programs our way, it is not necessarily the case for the Summer season. Sales are going to be slow regardless of the availability of incentives and rebates.

Therefore, we think that, overall, incentives for July 2010 are not going to be any better than those for June. And in many cases, the incentives will not be as good. If you are thinking about buying or leasing a car now, and you can get a good deal now, don’t hold out hoping for July will be better. If you wait, it’ll be too late.

In fact, we think that incentives won’t start to perk up until about September, the traditional Fall buying season when many manufacturers bring out their new models. Fall and Winter are always good car-buying times.

There may be some exceptions, however. Toyota is still recovering from bad press over some of their problems of the last few months. They want to let people know they have solved the problems and that you can now get good deals on Toyota vehicles. Incentives will continue to be good.

Also watch for good deals on discontinued or sold-off brands such as Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, Volvo, Mercury. And there are still many 2009 leftover (and some 2010 leftover) models still in dealers’ inventory that will have good incentives.

We’ll all have to wait until after July 6th to see if we’re right about these predictions. Most new programs will not be announced until about July 8th or later.