The elephant in the (car) showroom
You might think buying a car is a piece of cake, you walk into the showroom, you buy, and you drive off in a new or used car. Nothing could be further from the truth: the pandemic turned the car market upside down, and today it's no longer that simple. Dealers no longer have new cars sitting on their lots, and cars ordered for production arrive with months of unpredictable delay. Poles have made a rush on used cars, which are now starting to run short too…
Today, buying a new car comes down to answering one simple question: do I take whatever is available (if anything is at all), often at an inflated price and with no chance to configure it, or do I wait many months for a car to be built? What's more, some equipment options can't even be added when configuring a new car because of the global shortage of chips used universally across all vehicles. No new-car salesperson in a showroom or on a popular online platform will say it out loud, but the proverbial elephant in the room is obvious: there is currently no way to predict the real delivery time of a new car configured for production.
The rush on used cars The shortage of new cars has triggered a sharp rise in demand for used ones, which has turned this market upside down as well. They are simply beginning to run short, and the best deals disappear very quickly.
That is precisely why Poland's largest online showroom of almost-new cars, carmore.pl, exists. A single place bringing together more than a thousand of the most attractive offers of vetted used cars of every model, from over 40 dealers across Poland.
We are seeing an avalanche-like rise in demand for used cars, especially the almost-new 2–4-year-old ones with a verified history and low mileage. We don't even put the most attractive offers on our platform, because they find a new owner before they even appear on it. Increasingly, we even see situations where several CarMore consultants are running the financing process for the same car for several different clients, and the car goes to whoever gets a positive decision first and finalises the transactioncommentsa CarMore expert on used-car leasing.
The used-car market is currently distinctly overheated, which means that the prices of used cars, especially the newest domestic ones that are reliable and low-mileage, are also being driven up by some dealers and sellers. It is clearly visible that access to the right sources of vetted yet not overvalued cars is crucial.
Despite the sharply increased interest in cars on the CarMore platform that we are observing, we are still able to provide our clients with a good source of interesting offers for practically every commonly available model. Of course, there are the odd offers whose sale price is "inflated" by the selling dealer, but this concerns sporadic cases of models that simply aren't very plentiful on the market. Access to more than a thousand cars from a great many vetted dealer sources allows us to maintain a highly competitive offer from the client's perspective at all times. Thanks to our cooperation with many dealer entities and advanced price analytics, we can clearly identify which cars are not overvalued relative to their worth.
If we want to acquire (buy for cash or take on lease) an attractively priced yet almost-new used car, we do, however, need to change our strategy a little, including showing quicker reflexes than before.
Clients are often used to a drawn-out decision-making process when buying a car. This also applies to used cars. Historically, our clients needed around 7–10 days to make a final decision. Today, however, that has stopped working for a simple reason, in that time the car will manage to find another client who is simply faster. As CarMore, we have the option of reserving cars for our clients for up to 48 hours, but by dragging our decision out beyond that time we risk the car simply being sold, incidentally, to another, more decisive client of ours. And sometimes it happens that a car is sold to another client, and we offer the second one a similar example. Undeniably, our advantage as CarMore is that even when a car is sold to someone else, we are able to offer the client who needs more time to think an interesting alternative as well.
Without a doubt, the rapidly growing interest in used cars is forcing clients into somewhat different behaviour, including faster decision-making, if we really want to enjoy (buy or lease) an attractive car at an affordable price. Fortunately, the CarMore client-advisor team, also growing to meet demand, is always able to find the right car for every client, regardless of their individual decision-making process.
All of this means that when planning a new company car, it is definitely worth checking out the CarMore offer. You may find that it's exactly there that you can, without leaving home and without unnecessary formalities, choose your next car and enjoy it within just a few days.