INDIANAPOLIS— The month of April was good for sales at Ray Skillman KIA West.
“Definitely trending in an increase for sure,” said Bruce Chaleunphonh, a sales manager at the dealership.
Car sales are up across the country. This is usually the time people start buying for the warmer season, but experts say some of that is due to potential tariffs that would increase the price of a car by 25 percent.
“We haven’t had a ton of people talk about tariffs,” said Chaleunphonh. “We have had maybe a few people who moved their timetable up from maybe fall into now just because they know this may have an impact on their buyer experience.”
“I suspect there’s some amount of that being driven by consumers who are making an effort to purchase early or purchase in anticipation of price increases of the tariffs and simply the cost of manufacturing an automobile,” said Andrew Butters, an economist at the IU Kelley School of Business.
According to the most recent Cox Automotive Report, new car sales are increasing weekly, but supply isn’t keeping up. At the end of March, new car sales were up 17% from February and nearly 12% from last year.
“Automobiles and manufacturing of automobiles specifically are ones that are incredibly reliant on international trade and movement of goods across borders,” said Butters.
Car rentals are also up because of the potential increase to car prices.
“Anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 dollars on top of existing car prices and that’s making people rethink the renting vs buying equation,” said Jonathan Weinberg the founder of autoslash.com.
Autoslash.com is a site that helps find the best possible deals on rental cars. Weinberg says customers are looking at long-term rentals because if tariffs happen it may be cheaper not to own a car.
“With the average care payment being about $700 and insurance being another $250 on top of that, we can often times get our customers in a rental for $550 to $650 a month,” said Weinberg.
Weinberg says it also offers flexibility and no maintenance costs and it could also ave 30% a month, but those numbers and the cost of buying all depend on what happens with tariff negotiations.
“These are really being used as a tool right now to get negotiations happening and hopefully as an economists we see the importance of trade and the importance of having good cross borders,” said Butters.
