- April 25, 2024
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from: white hot pr
As many Floridians will be all too aware, the price of used vehicles has skyrocketed (by 37% from December 2020 to December 2021), marking the largest 12-month increase for cars in the history of the consumer price index.
While the market surge has yielded some advantage to the profit margins of many local dealers, potential buyers are finding themselves struggling to find cars within their budget, or even within their state boundaries. One buyer was reported to have travelled 537 miles from Michigan to Hanover, Pennsylvania, to fetch a vehicle.
Quantrell Subaru, a Lexington-based dealer, commissioned a survey of 2,690 buyers across the country to find out just how far they’d be prepared to travel to buy a used car. The survey discovered that many Floridians are willing to drive the distance for a good deal: The average person here said they would travel up to 442 miles to purchase a used car – around the equivalent of a road trip to Decataur, Georgia.
When broken down across state lines, those in Alaska were prepared to travel the furthest to pick up their perfect used car: 722 miles.
The soaring prices of the used-car market is in large part the result of a problem that has affected the economy since the pandemic began - a severe shortage of computer chips (fueled by a ramped-up demand for computers and household products which also use these semiconductors). As automakers cut down on production (due to a lack of chips), prices soared for used cars. And the lack of new cars hitting the market has had a knock-on effect and led to a shortage in used cars also.
