If you're a dealer who had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reseal, resurface or restripe your new-vehicle sales lot with the least amount of hassle, you might be out of luck.
New-vehicle inventories are starting to build again — and relatively quickly — thanks to a combination of low incentives and higher interest rates that have kept millions of potential buyers on the sidelines. While assembly plants still face supply chain challenges, there are signs of recovery. For instance, North American production rose 12 percent in 2022 to 14.7 million vehicles.
U.S. vehicle inventory rose sharply in December, topping 1.8 million for the first time since May 2021, according to data compiled by Cox Automotive and the Automotive News Research & Data Center, and it was up nearly two-thirds from where it stood a year earlier.