Memorial Day often is filled with cookouts, swimming — and car shopping.
The holiday is expected to be a big one for dealerships.
“It’s a huge day for car sales,” said Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “People have that extra day off. Summer is right around the corner. People are looking at family vacations and thinking maybe the old wheels aren’t what they should be, so it’s a big, big weekend for car sales.”
Nerad said he expects larger family vehicles to do well. That category also is where some of the best deals might be, he said.
“That really coincides in a lot of ways with the trend in the marketplace anyways these days which is toward larger vehicles,” he said. “Fuel prices have gone down quite a bit and then snuck back up a little bit, but they’re still at a fairly low level, so that has influenced people to go toward larger vehicles and away from hybrids and smaller vehicles. We see that correlation all the time. They move in the same sphere as fuel prices.”
Nerad said Memorial Day is a good time to find a wide variety of vehicles.
“We haven’t come to the end of the model year, so you’re not just getting the runts of the litter — the leftovers that you might see at the end of the model year,” he said. “There’s a wide selection of popular colors, equipment, all that stuff.”
The 2014 models, however, had been mostly picked over — but those that remain could be had for a heavy discount, he said. This also is the end of the season for being able to get a custom car built.
But those thinking about walking into a dealership can do a lot to avoid the hassle. Websites like kbb.com or edmunds.com offer customers a chance to do a lot of shopping before walking onto a car lot.
“With a reasonable amount of preparation — and you can do a lot of preparation at home over the course of an hour or two — that hour is so well spent because it could literally save you thousands of dollars, a lot of angst, a lot of problems if you think through this a little bit,” Nerad said.
Dealers also prefer customers who have done some research before entering the dealership, he said.
“Dealerships like people like that,” he said. “They like people who know what they want, know what they can afford, know what’s in their sweet spot. Dealerships don’t like to dance with the customer any more than the customer likes it. I think both sides would like to get the dance over with quicker.”