Where Are the March Car Deals?

February 25, 2010

March Car Deals As always, at the end of each month, we find people looking for next month’s car deals — in this case, looking for March 2010 deals.

And our answer is always the same each month. We don’t know and neither does anyone else. Car manufacturers don’t announce new incentive plans until the old plans expire. This month, most plans expire on March 1. The manufacturers don’t even tell their dealers in advance.

It would certainly be nice if we knew next month’s plan before the old plan expired. Then we would know whether to take the current deal or wait for the better deal next month. But we don’t have that luxury. Manufacturers want it that way.

We expect that most new car deals and incentives will be announced during the week of March 1.

One of the unknown factors this month will be Toyota’s plans. As you may know, Toyota has had sales problems due to all the publicity surrounding a couple of serious defects and resulting recalls (see our article, Toyota Fire Sales Soon?). We can be sure that other manufacturers are going to try to take advantage of Toyota’s temporary problems and will offer some interesting incentives to try to lure buyers away from Toyota.

But as soon as they fix their problems, which could be soon, Toyota will begin offering incredible incentives to get those customers back and restore confidence in the brand. That, in turn, could start a snowball effect, in which the other manufacturers could then begin offering even better incentives. And so on, and so on.

So the next month or so could be very interesting for car buyers. March could be the month that car buyers dream about — or not. As we stated at the beginning of this article, nobody knows.