Whenever fuel prices soar, there’s two vehicles that one starts to see in greater abundance: Geo Metros and Diesel VWs. I spotted this VW pickup just down the street, where they’re building an addition. And yes, the other pickup isn’t exactly giant either.
By the way, did you know that dealer inventories of big pickups have almost doubled in the past month or two? Will big incentives be back too? And fuel efficient vehicle inventory is very tight, not surprisingly?
Update: From that autonews.com article I linked to above, about pickup inventories:
I assumed this was a diesel, as I haven’t seen a gas engine survivor of one of these in an eternity. But diesels, yes. All 54 hp of them.
This one’s not being called on to haul much more than its driver. All that wasted space…
Period-correct 1980’s Hella driving lights with covers.
What goes around, comes around; including 40 mpg pickups.
The only marketing incentive to move big pickups will be for the dealers to cut the market adjustment.
I don’t know what you term ” a big incentive “, but each of the Big 3 truck manufacturers has incentives of at least $1,000 on certain models of their pickups with a few models of SUV/CUV also being incentivized(?). I think Chevy even combines cash and dealer added accessories discounts in some areas of the country.
Full-size pickups are one of the auto industry’s highest-profit, biggest sellers. So, as one might imagine, that’s what they concentrate on. Unfortunately, with the recent fuel price spikes, full-size pickups that get low fuel mileage aren’t currently hot sellers. You’d really have to want a Ram TRX that ‘starts’ at 80 large and gets 10mpg (not to mention the accompanying Uconnect gremlins).
The computer chip shortage is actually one silver lining for the manufacturers since it forced them to scale back production ‘before’ the gas spikes hit. If not for that, there’d be ‘big’ inventories of full-size pickups sitting on dealer lots now. Ford made news by continuing to spit out large numbers of F-150s, just without chips that were to be added at a later date when they became available.
There’s some interesting points raised above but doubling of inventory is meaningless without numbers. Our Chevy dealer had a couple of trucks in his lot for the last few months, now he has four? A far cry from the 100+ per usual. Although the Ford dealer does have a very large number stashed in a field on the city outskirts waiting for chips to arrive to be able to finish them. That’ll be fun, selling year+ old trucks if the chips ever arrive, hopefully before the next hailstorm.
RAM specifically has had incentives all along. Last October offering 0% financing for 48 months along with discounts and now (since at least April) doing so again. The dealers are doing different things, most of them jacking up the prices. But Chevy had the same $1000 + accesories incentives, again meaningless if the dealers are gouging.
As an aside what is interesting is the tack of “well, there are less cars to sell so we have to make more on each one” – eh, for the last forever we used to hear that dealers don’t make any money on new cars at all anyway, and their operations are sustained by the service department, those needs didn’t go away. The supposed $0 on 17 million units is a lot less than whatever price gouge or even just sticker price at this year’s 12-13 million units. Yes I’m being a little facetious here as some makers obviously always were able to command decent pricing, but still…
Anyone buying a TRX at sticker is counting themselves lucky, most are still going for closer to 100k, selling one used seems to be a good way to recoup all of the “investment” and sometimes perhaps more. But anyone dropping 80k or more on a truck or anything can likely handle the gasoline prices. It is an amazing machine, even the most avowed truck hater should experience one, you’ll be amazed that it somehow even manages to return 10-12mpg. Anyone happy with 1960s and 1970s style vehicles vs their mpg should really be expecting more like 3-4mpg. No that doesn’t mean it’s a good choice for most, but it’s far more useful than a Corvette or McLaren or Ferrari or whatever.
Normal new full size trucks don’t usually have much trouble getting 20mpg (or more) on the highway if driven at regular speeds. Lifts and knobbies hurt that. Still, that’s about what many recent minivans and midsize CUVs do/did and is a huge increase from a decade or two ago.
Diesel out here is at least a dollar more than regular. So a 40mpg diesel VW is comparable to a 33mpg gasser, which is hard to find in any truck, but quite easy in a car.
Trucks are still profitable (well, large ones anyway), while I’m sure Ford could sell many more $21k hybrid Mavericks than they do, they likely are making so little (if any, I believe the base model is a loser) money on them that they won’t, not when a hybrid base Escape or the prior hybrid Fusion SE built in the same factory went for a lot more and didn’t reasonably cost more to build. But they should figure that out, the rest of the makers are coming, and I’m sure Toyota for one will be able to figure out a way to sell a competing product quite profitably.
It was in an Automotive News article, about the rapid increase in pickup inventory, including a dubling, from 30 days to 60 days of inventory at Ram. Chevy was up too, but not quite as much.
I’m trying to find the article, but unfortunately, the search function at their site sucks, as I’ve found before. That’s why didn’t link to it in my post.
I found it:
Cox said in its analysis that among the U.S. market’s 30 top-selling models, full-size trucks had the most supply, putting them almost back to traditional inventory levels, with Ram holding a 70-day supply, while Chevy’s and Ford’s full-size pickups had around a 50-day supply. The Ford Explorer and Hyundai Santa Fe crossovers were also relatively plentiful, Cox noted.
On a segment basis, Cox said the tightest inventories were found among more fuel-efficient offerings, including compact cars, hybrids, small crossovers, subcompact cars and minivans. Along with full-size pickups, full-size cars had the highest days-supply figures, Cox said.
https://www.autonews.com/dealers/us-vehicle-inventory-stays-flat-113-million
Thanks for the info, that doesn’t seem to reflect what’s on the ground around here at least (which is anecdotal I know). I do know many of the local dealers historically have shown “ordered” and “in-transit” vehicles on their websites and counted them as inventory when in fact they were presold orders. When my mom ordered her Subaru last month the dealer’s webpage showed 60 cars either on the lot or in transit. Of those, ONE was actually available for her to buy and it wasn’t what she wanted so she ordered one. She has a signed purchase order and put down a small deposit but her car will also show as inventory when in actuality it’s effectively (if not legally yet) sold.
Doubled from what? Inventory remains scarce where I am. I checked out Woodhouse Ford’s website in Blair, Nebraska. They prided themselves on having “truck mountain” where they inventoried a few hundred F-150s for many years. The mountain has made local headlines for massive hail that made for huge damage clams, and a light aircraft once crashed on it.
This morning, they have 80 Fords listed as inventory. Much of the stock is labeled “in transit.” Of that 80, 47 are F-150s, 13 of which are are actually on the lot. Most trucks here are ordered and delivery times are long.
See my comment above.
Very interesting for sure! I did not know “dealer inventories of big pickups has almost doubled in the past month or two”.
I haven’t noticed.
Doubling from what to what? 5-day to 9-day? 10-day to 19-day? I haven’t paid close attention to the few dealers I drive by, when I drive, so nothing has POPPED out. I still see a few new vehicles and mostly used cars (and not many) parked to make the dealer lots look as full as possible
Hopefully Paul will give us some details soon.
Since a disproportionate number of vehicle buyers are older (over 45) and a disproportionate number of them are over 62 (old enough to remember the seventies), I think the over 62 crowd that was considering a new car between now and the next five years will be buying NOW, whatever they can get. So in addition to supply chain issues crimping supply, demand will now be juiced by those who have money and don’t want to pay 25-50% more in a few years.
So with all that in the background, yes, I can useable cars from the 80s that are not rusted out and that are easy on gas in local driving being revived and pressed into service–like Rabbit diesels
See my comment above.
.. this summer reminds me of the summer of 1979…
As far as diesels and fuel prices go, I paid over $7/US gallon the last time I filled up my ’93 Econoline IDI Diesel. A record!
That’s what baffles me. From the best info I can find, diesel fuel seems to run between $0.60 to $0.90 more than gas. Yeah, they might get better fuel mileage than gas-powered, but not all ‘that’ much better (anymore). If someone isn’t doing any major cargo hauling or towing, is that enough to offset the price difference?
Add in the requirement of having to add DEF and increased maintenance and initial purchase cost, I don’t see diesel power as all that terrific, even during time of gas price spikes, at least for typical personal transportation.
Around here a lot of people do tow. And others like the driving and power characteristics of diesel. DEF is cheap, about $3.50 a gallon, you need about a gallon every 1000 or so miles in our old Touareg when properly/legally tuned so it’s irrelevant, but the increased cost of oil changes has to hurt ($350 !!! at my Jeep dealer last I saw vs under $50 for regular oil).
A 3.0 diesel Silverado 1500 will apparently return around 30mpg on the highway when lightly loaded, a V8 Silverado a bit better than 20 and the 4cylinder maybe 24, and a far bigger gap when towing or fully loaded. The diesel price difference is not big anymore when you’re talking $50k trucks, maybe a couple of thousand now. So it still may make sense to some, but probably not for low annual mileage around town usage.
Good point on the DEF. When you can’t find DEF, your new diesel will stop running…
Paul, thank you for link. AutoNews blocks me (non-subscriber). Anecdotally, here in SE Michigan, I do NOT see a 35-day supply.
Maybe only 0.03 of the 1.13 million vehicle inventory is here.
If 70-80 is normal and represents 3/4 full lots, 35-day should mean a third full or a couple dozen cars
You generally need DEF every 5-10k miles in to replenish a 5-10 gallon tank of it so about as often as the oil is changed. And it’s at every gas station and WalMart and Target and Auto Parts store in areas that sell Diesel. The cost is less than the soda you buy at the gas station per gallon…
Haven’t seen that around the Bay Area as the 30-50 crowd just love their big trucks and SUVs although it would be nice to. Come to think of it I haven’t seen nor heard one diesel outside of a mid-80s 300D Turbo Diesel on the highway.
Well, DEF isn’t an issue in that Rabbit Pickup, fwiw.
What I want to know is WHERE do these things hibernate between gas crises? Is there some sort of vast underground liar for all the sad 1980s diesels out there? I mean, they didn’t often run that well when driven regularly…I’d imagine getting one started after being off the road for a couple of years would be more trouble than it’s worth.
The thought of someone storing those or any car for the next fuel crisis comes off as bizarre to me – but then I’m in Europe where most cars would fit into the definition of “economy car” in the US… Here those VWs which were not scrapped back then have long since become (semi-) coveted collectors cars, many having been modified to Gti specs as opposed to preserving the snail-like diesel version…
In 2008 when gas hit a record of $4 per gallon, most of the Hummers went away and the Geo Metros/motorcycles were on the road. As gas prices dropped, the Hummers came out of hibernation. Haven’t seen too many lately, so maybe they are on hiatus.