Dealer lot was empty

I swung by my Toyota dealer this morning to pick up the title for my truck.

I was astonished to only see 2 Tundras, 2 4Runners, 1 Camry, and that was it. They had a Tacoma TSS and a Tundra TSS on the showroom.

I talked with a salesman and he said it’s been like this for four months. I asked him when he is getting more cars and trucks. He said all the time but everything is presold.

Holy cow. The other lots in our area for other makers look the same. No wonder Carvana, Vroom, and Driveway are buying used cars at ridiculous prices.

Good luck shopping for a Tacoma in Dallas/Ft. Worth.

 

The dealer I got my ‘17 from shows 13 brand new Toyota’s.
Tacoma’s being one 4cyl and one TRDOR, and one Tundra.

 

Have you been under a rock for the past six months?
There have been hundreds of news articles and hundreds of posts on this subject.

 

You need to crawl back under your rock grumpy old man.

 

Here’s how our lots been looking the past 6 months

 

If only they knew a guy with some Corollas and tacomas

 

I was at our local dealership yesterday. Wish I’d taken a picture now. Looks like a vacant lot.

 

I actually was at my local dealership today for State Inspection as well and the lot was pretty barren. One baseline Tacoma and one 4-runner, a few Corollas....chip shortage isn't looking like it will clear up this year anytime soon.

 

The local Toyota dealer near me has a lot of non Toyotas and few second gen tacomas. There’s even a Dodge Ram and a gladiator displayed in front.

 

This isn't something unique to Toyota, I was at the MINI dealer on Monday having the JCW tuning kit installed and they only have four new MINIs. They do have an ok selection of CPO cars, but the lot is pretty empty.

The one thing I have noticed at a number of new car dealers is the selling of cars that would have went straight to auction. The local Ford dealer has a few really beat up trucks that are front and centre on the lot. It kind of makes a person say WTF, but you need to have metal to move.

 

Yep.

I bought my 2021 on 12/4/2020. First time I had been to the dealer since.

I don’t sit around and read hundreds or articles and posts.

Back to my cave…

 

CDJR Dealership I work at you can barely find a place to park. New shipment once every 10 days

 

All I hear is the constant excuse that the automakers are waiting for chips to arrive from China. But then I also hear China is back in business waiting for the rest of the world to crawl back from under the rocks.

(Crawling back to my rock now...)

 

And they might be translating 'chips' as being 'short hairs'.

As in we have you by them now.........

 

Many raw materials and base products come from countries still dealing very seriously with Covid so even as China and others open, its still a long way from over. The outdoor industry is a fucked mess as a whole as well. Supply chain issues faaaaaar down the line from where people ever would have imagined the holdups would come from.

 

I just checked the online inventory for my local Toyota dealership. Here's what they have:



What you don't see here is that almost all of the vehicles shown as 'in stock' here are marked 'in transit' when you drill down.

In addition, every single one of them has a $1995 'market adjustment' added to the price.

Glad I'm not in the market for a new vehicle right now...

 

Many are likely presold and unavailable.

 

Some bean counter in the Toyota corporate back office is like: “hmmm, I knew there was some rule of logistics in freshman economics. Driven? Divert? Drummel? SHIT… Diversify. <runs down the hall>. Boss, boss!!! I gotta great idea. How about we make sure we have multiple suppliers for each of our critical parts. And if we can’t, then we make them ourselves.”

 

Maybe someone should tell the financial markets there maybe some industries world wide in a mess then. It seems oblivious to the dark clouds above the rocks

 

They're call bean counters because that's all they do. They don't know how the beans are made.