Where will the motorbikes and cars go when they are 'unsold' and have been in inventory for many years?

As new models go on sale, how will dealers handle the remaining inventory?

Have you ever wondered what happens to those unsold cars that are sitting in inventory? Where do they go when they have to make room for the newest models? Of course, dealers don't give away cars for free, and they have secrets they don't tell the public.

Car and motorcycle dealers are franchisees. This means that they buy new cars from manufacturers and sell them at a higher price to make a profit. So once the dealer buys the cars, they belong to them.

'The day the cars leave the factory, they belong to the dealers,' said Huw Williams, a spokesperson for the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA). 'If a dealer buys 500 cars from a manufacturer, that means they're responsible for those 500 cars.' They can't send unsold cars back to the manufacturer, so they have to find ways to entice customers to buy them instead.

It is not uncommon for cars to be stored for months before reaching customers.

Accordingly, there are a few options for dealers when their cars are not selling:

1. One is that they can ship unsold vehicles to another market where those models might still be popular. For example, a Toyota dealer in a city with an unsold pickup truck could ship it to a Toyota dealer in the same rural area where there is more demand for that model.
2. Second , these inventory cars can also be auctioned, but the dealers will have to pay a fee to the auctioneer. At the same time, they also have to accept a loss because the car will be sold at a discounted price.
3. Third , dealers can choose to lease these vehicles to customers whose vehicles are under maintenance or repair.
4. The last option is to use discounts and promotions on unsold cars that are in stock. According to dealers, the longer a car is left, the harder it is to sell, so even if it is at a loss, they have to find a way to sell it all. Dealers will sell cars on installments or launch attractive promotional packages to attract users and quickly "clear" inventory. This is a strategy applied by many manufacturers and dealers because it shows high efficiency.

How to avoid buying a used car

In fact, it is not unusual for cars to be stored for several months before reaching customers. However, in some cases, there are still dealers and sales staff who intentionally deliver to customers cars that have been stored for a long time. Normally, the time the car is stored can be up to several years, if not well preserved (left in the yard), in addition to the deterioration of quality due to weather. Therefore, knowing which cars are in storage to avoid and buy a new car is something that many customers are interested in.

Accordingly, to know whether a car is a long-term inventory vehicle or not, buyers can base on some information such as the car's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) or the year the tire was manufactured.

There are also many parameters on the tire like a "birth certificate".

The VIN number is usually printed in 3 locations : on the car frame at the driver's door, on the engine compartment partition and under the driver's windshield. The 10th character contains information about the year of manufacture. According to regulations agreed upon between car manufacturers, the alphabet starting with the letter A (not using the letters I, O, Q, U or Z because they can easily be confused with numbers) will be used to number from 2010 to 2030. From there, you can determine the year of manufacture of the car you want to buy.

Similar to the VIN number, the tire also has many parameters like its "birth certificate". On the tire sidewall there is always a series of codes starting with the DOT phrase and ending with 4 digits . However, to know the production time of a car tire, you only need to pay attention to the four digits usually placed in an ellipse. Those are the numbers indicating the date of manufacture.