DO NOT WAIT TO BUY A NEW CAR (Prices Going UP in 2026) | Episode 970

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It's noon here in Ventner City, New Jersey and our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

And this is Car-Edge Live for Wednesday, November 26th.

Yes!

Just one day before, well, Gobble, Gobble Day with your hosts, me, Ray, in Ventner,

the Goblin Fool, and my handsome young man's son, Zach, in Washington, D.C.

How are you today, this morning?

Concerned.

But you know what?

You're my dad and I love you.

Thank you everyone for joining us.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

We do have a sponsor for today's program.

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Dad, the big story this morning I want to kick things off with.

We have yet another price increase coming in 2026.

Audi raising the Q3 SUV price by $3,900 going into next year.

This is after they already raised the Q5 price significantly.

This is the beginning of a trend that we anticipate seeing in 2026.

Car prices, MSRPs, they don't really have anywhere to go except for up,

unfortunately, and that is bad news for shoppers, but good news for right now.

You take advantage of the fact that we're at the end of the year,

the best time to buy a car.

There are incentives.

There's an incredible oversupply of inventory.

But dad, we've got yet another vehicle getting a price increase here over a year.

Well, the good news is you won't have to worry about that Q3 until the

first quarter of next year when it actually comes out.

But it is a sad commentary on the industry when we know for a fact

that inventories are building up because the people who actually can afford cars

are staying on the sidelines longer than they have in the past.

And I don't think raising the prices on certain vehicles is a way to,

I don't know, draw those people back into the market.

Now, when you look at the Q3, yes, it's redesigned much like the Q5 was redesigned,

but they've dropped to trim levels.

You know, they used to be able to get it in the premium and the premium plus.

Well, now you can only get it in the S line,

which is naturally more expensive than the premium or the premium plus to begin with.

But when you cut out base models or lower equipped models

and your base MSRP goes up nearly $4,000,

that just signals to people, well, it might have been something I was interested in

when it was $4,000 less, but at this price point, it's totally outside of my budget.

So I'm not 100% sure as to what it is that Audi is trying to do

when it comes to selling vehicles in this country.

But it seems like they're going to be on the wrong side of history for this.

And it's not just Audi, Dad.

For example, Honda, there's an image going viral online right now.

And it's a 2026 Prelude, Dad, that a dealership has added a bunch of products

to taking the asking price up to nearly $62,000 on a Honda Prelude.

Who's going out there buying a $62,000 or $10,000 to mark up Honda Prelude?

No one.

I mean, that's the confounding aspect of this is as we go into 2026,

we know that MSRP and asking prices will likely go up as a result of

increase to cost for these manufacturers to produce their vehicles.

That being said, when we look at the data for new vehicle inventory right now,

we have the highest level of new vehicle inventory we've seen all year long.

Dad, I'll pull that up here just so we can look at it.

We're at nearly 3 million vehicles in dealer inventory,

almost a 90 days supply of dealer inventory.

And so it's confounding because, yes, right now we are in the period where the

dealerships, the manufacturers, everyone in this value equation is incentivized

to sell these vehicles.

And so right now certainly as a buyer's market and it gets added on to

because you look at some of these things that are happening already and it

just signals that it's going to get worse next year, which could mean

that December of next year is an even better time to be buying a new car.

But obviously, if you don't have a year to wait, you might as well make

a move now, but it is just confounding that Honda is nuts to me.

62 grand for a prelude.

What? Well, I think the Honda dealership's hope is that somebody

remembers the original prelude and desperately wants to relive

their youth and is willing to overpay to do it.

The concept of adding $10,000 market adjustments on and I'm going to

guess that that car is the MSRP on that car is probably somewhere in the 40s.

OK, and then the dealer added dealer installed accessories and a $10,000

additional dealer markup.

Because there are people out there who will remember the last version

of the prelude and and honestly, the prelude was a hell of an exciting

coop that was available through Honda and it was quite popular.

So I'm sure there's a certain affinity to be able to get back into another one.

But the fact that the dealer wants to be that greedy wants to I'm guessing.

What did they add about $13,000, $14,000 off of the

general MSRP? Yeah, you know, that's just that's just a signal

to anybody who would be interested in that vehicle that this is a dealership

that isn't going to care about me ever coming back because, well,

when the ether wears off and I realize I paid an extra $14,000

for the vehicle just to be one of the first ones to get it,

I'm kind of going to resent that.

And that's not how you build your business or build customer relations

or keep keep a customer in the fold so that they'll want to come back.

Yeah, absolutely, dad, absolutely.

And we're also seeing another phenomena in the market, which is these

manufacturers are choosing to go more and more upmarket.

For example, here's an article earlier this year.

I'm going to share it on the screen right here.

You've got there it is.

Why Mazda wants to take on Mercedes and BMW?

We also know, dad, that Kia keeps making their vehicles more expensive,

trying to go upmarket, trying to push their brand to be more appealing

to attract, you know, they say younger shoppers, but who knows?

They're purchasing upmarket.

Same thing with Hyundai.

We'll do a little bit of a live experiment here.

I'll go over to the car edge car search and let's just plug in

really quickly, Hyundai.

We know Hyundai continues to go more upmarket and let's look at the Palisade.

That selling vehicle they've gotten their lineup.

And yeah, there it is.

This is what I wanted to look at.

What's the first row of MSRPs we're looking at?

Sixty thousand big works.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

For holidays, man, for Hyundai's.

And so we know these automakers continue to want to push upmarket,

increase their MSRPs, increase their margins, especially as their costs go up.

It's why, especially when you start to factor in and we keep track

of this, obviously, very closely back on caredge.com.

When is the best time to buy down to the freaking hour, folks?

I mean, we are in that best time of the year to make these moves to take

advantage of the fact that there's an oversupply of inventory and know

that a year from now, there were also probably an oversupply of inventory

because all signs point to fewer people being able to afford vehicles.

And eventually these manufacturers will have to reverse course on pricing.

Well, we do know that the anticipation is that sales in November

will be down eight percent year over year.

OK, so that's a significant decline from what we saw last November.

Now, knowing that there's an excess amount of new car inventory

and that sales really dropped off in November,

that's going to make every dealership even more motivated to move the

the metal, so to speak, to move the inventory that they have one hand.

So that that should that should make it a little bit easier to work discounts.

That's not to say that the vehicle still won't be overpriced.

But whatever the savings are will be significantly higher now

than what they would have been eight weeks ago

or what they'll probably be 10, 12 weeks from now.

Yeah, man, what a situation we are currently in.

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Dad, do you want to switch gears?

OK, I've I've always been known as a gear switcher.

All right, we're going to thank the folks in our chat quickly.

And then we're going to go look at something on X from Squeegee Kids.

Thank you, Squeegee Kids.

Happy Thanksgiving to Ray and Zach.

And of course, all the gotcha motor dealerships out there.

Thank you, Squeegee Kid. Good to see you.

And thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.

Very Joe. Thank you, Joe.

Happy Thanksgiving, guys.

Thanks for the quick reply pops.

Thank you, dad for getting back.

Yeah, you have no idea,

but Joe and I have been emailing back and forth this morning.

So my pleasure, Joe.

All right, dad, here's what I wanted to put on your radar.

This was tagged on over on X over on Twitter.

Here's an example, y'all, of a four square.

And I'm going to have you break it down, dad.

This is on a 2024 brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Oh, this is a car deal done last year,

but I want to spend some time here.

So we've got a trade in, which is a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

You can see they got the deal done

because it says congrats with a big smiley face.

Have you ever been known to write congrats and a Sharpie

on a on an outfit on a four square paper?

Yes. All right, so let's break this down, dad.

Let's have this be educational.

So if we're saying that now is the time to go by in today's market,

let's break down what we're looking at here.

Let me get the chat off the screen.

We got us down there.

What are we looking at here, dad?

Vehicle price up at the top 51, two, seven, five.

Break this down for us and explain what's going on here, please.

OK, so the first square is the is the vehicle,

this the MSRP of the vehicle and then the selling price.

First we're meeting the top left.

The top left.

OK, and as you can see, that vehicle has an MSRP of 51, two, 75

and the dealer is selling it for $48,020 after the rebate,

but it's plus tax, title and fees.

Oh, my goodness.

And one of those fees is Ekbon coding for $1,495.

So what I can extrapolate from that at the moment

is that there isn't any discount other than the rebates

more than likely.

The top right hand corner is the current market value

for your trade in, OK, of $10,000.

So that's the trade allowance.

The bottom left hand box is the anticipated cash down

from the customer and then the bottom right is what your payments are.

And as you can see the things that are circled here, OK,

what circled the cash down because that's one of the things

that the dealership wants to concentrate on.

You might not want to concentrate on that,

but that's what they want to concentrate on.

And then this circle of the payment at 84 months,

somewhere between 619 and 627.

OK, now we don't know what the payoff was for the trade.

We don't know if there's positive equity, negative equity.

We don't we don't know the actual breakdown of what the total selling

price is or the outdoor price because the dealership personnel

are getting you to concentrate on the two most important things to them.

Cash down because cash down typically impacts profit

and payments and terms.

And what's surprising is that they actually put the term in many cases.

They just put a payment and a payment range.

And then if the customer says, well, how long how long is that for?

They might go, well, that's for the standard 84 months,

but we could probably get you extended terms if you wanted it.

Yeah, there's a lot in here.

So God, yes.

Yeah, but I want to I want to take our time

and I want you to be as clear as you possibly can.

You said something you don't often say on this channel.

You said that cash down is profit for the dealership.

We're going to have to explain that.

And then also, will you take some time to explain the difference between this

and how we coach people how to negotiate, which is obviously out the door price.

You separate the trade in as a separate transaction, etc.

So first things first, though, you rarely say that line that you just said,

so I'm going to need you to take a moment here to explain why is cash

down profit for the dealership?

Because if there's no cash down and it's a payment that you have to get to,

then the things that you're going to have to adjust are the price of the

vehicle and the trade it allows.

Now, if you're adjusting the price of the vehicle, you're lowering your gross

profit in the vehicle to do that.

And cash down allows you not to have to play with the yet with the

profit in the vehicle.

You're concentrating on they might have started initially at $5,000 down

and the customer said, well, I only have 500 to put down.

And they kept working the customer.

Well, if you had to, could you come up with $2,500?

And by the customer agreeing to that, they are they are not

concentrating on the out the door price.

They have no idea at this point in time what they're actually paying

for the vehicle and how much they're really, really getting against

the selling price of that vehicle for their trade in.

So it is it is a way to get a customer to take their eye off the ball.

And the ball is the out the door price.

That is the only thing you need to be concerned with initially.

You have to you have to work a discount on the vehicle, find out

what the total out the door price is.

The trade becomes a second transaction.

Then ultimately, after you've agreed to a number on the trade

will impact that out the door price that you had agreed to.

It will either raise it or lower it, depending upon whether or not

you have positive equity or negative equity.

But concentrate on the out the door price first and then work

the trade in, then work cash down, then work payments, not

cash down payments, trade in price, of course.

Well, the thing is that out the door is nowhere even that he found

out that she no, no, they've never disclosed it.

And the first time this customer might find out what the out the door

number is, is when he's signing the bank contract.

And he might not even he or she might not even pay

that close attention to what the total price of the vehicle is

because the finance manager is going to be concentrating.

As you can see, your payments going to be 625.87

for that 84 months.

And they'll just keep concentrating on that and nothing else.

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This is the type of stuff that goes on day in and day out at car

dealerships and why it's so important to know how to negotiate.

I also like that cash down is referred to as initial investment.

Yeah, you see that?

Yes, yes.

Yeah, because who doesn't want to put an initial investment

on a depreciating asset.

I like Igor's comment here.

I always advise my friends to get up and leave if they see

a four square at the dealership because if you stay, you will

battle this dealership forever to get a deal.

How do you feel about this, dad?

Do you think the four square is a okay?

You keep doing it, you know, you keep negotiating or is this

something that's almost a red flag to you?

Well, you know, I see a lot of comments where, where the

comments are, oh, dealers don't use the four square anymore.

Oh, really?

Maybe not on your dealership.

But this is a year old, but still this is a good example.

And this, this is an absolute four square.

But dealerships do use a printouts that aren't broken down

into these four squares.

But the kind, it is, it is what, what I would call a disguised

or hidden four square because it's going to show you a selling

price.

It's going to show you a trade allowance.

It's going to show you what your options are with $5,000

down, $4,000 down.

It's going to show you what your payment range could be

at, at 48 months, 60 months, 72 months, 84 months.

Even though it's not broken down into four squares, it

contains all the, all the same concepts of a four square.

It is, it is old school.

It is a way to, to get you to concentrate on the wrong

aspect of the deal.

And let's face it, dealerships are good at doing that.

I mean, dad, at the end of the day, it is a

tried and trued approach to sell cars.

At the, it doesn't even matter if you call it a four square.

If you put four square, they are actively trying to get you to

think about these four things.

There's a selling price card.

Don't worry about how he got there.

There's a value for your trade.

Don't worry about how he got there.

We need you to put more money down.

Don't worry about why we need it, but we need it.

Oh, and here's the payment that you wanted to be at.

This is unequivocally how most card deals go down.

And, and typically the four square, the first time it

comes out is the salesperson is going to say, well, what hurts

the most? What's the biggest problem on this for you?

Is it that cash down?

I know we were looking for $5,000 down.

What could you comfortably afford?

Well, I only wanted to put 500.

Well, you know, if the difference between 500 and

5,000, that's $4,500.

That's going to negatively impact those payments.

So how much more could you come up with?

Let's work on that pain point first.

And so they're going to concentrate on the pain

point of cash down and payment.

They want you to do it in reverse order, because if you

do it in reverse order, you have no idea ultimately

what you paid for the vehicle.

Dad, we have a request to our community.

This is anonymous and we need your help.

Go to caredge.com slash ccbi.

That link has been on the ticker and I'll pop it

in the chat right now.

This is an anonymous survey that helps us produce

our monthly car edge, car buying index.

Compared to a year ago, is your household financial

situation better about the same?

Worse, you have questions here about vehicles,

about dealerships, about trust in the industry.

It is 100% anonymous.

No information, no personal information gathered.

Please share your input.

Doesn't matter if you're in the market to

buy a car or not.

And we're doing this monthly now, folks.

And for example, here, this was last month.

We didn't spend a lot of time on the show

talking about it.

But the headline number, 82% of Americans don't

trust car dealers as affordability hits crisis levels.

We've got so much good data that comes out of

this car edge, car buying index.

You can see here only 20% of respondents believe

the next 12 months will be a good time to buy a vehicle.

74% of car shoppers say vehicles are less

affordable than a year ago and 49% are not

satisfied with vehicle inventory in their price range.

The most alarming thing we found was that

that most people cannot trust dealers or Ford vehicles.

Shocker.

Shocker, only 82%.

That means there's 18% of the population out there

that thinks they can trust car dealers.

And well, those 18% of the respondents need to

get their heads examined.

And it's also low trust in the automakers,

that's 82% don't trust dealers.

59% report low trust in automakers.

2% express high trust.

And the reason, the reason in my opinion that

customers don't trust the automakers is because

the automakers know about the bait and switch

that happens at so many of their dealerships as

far as advertised price and then real price

when you go to buy it.

So they know about that.

And then, and then they get confronted with

the fact that there's lease programs from

the manufacturer and when you go in to do it,

you can't, excuse me.

So there's real good reasons why the buying

public doesn't feel good about either the

dealer or the manufacturer.

They think they're both crooks.

They just think the dealers are bigger crooks

than the smaller crook manufacturers.

Yeah, exactly.

Now there is a bright spot in all this,

which is folks like to research and they

trust the research that they do.

86% of respondents feel confident

that information they find when researching

is accurate and unbiased.

78% trust independent websites like CarEdge,

the most transparent information,

only 2% trust dealer websites the most.

Yeah, well, they're, you know, man,

all the years that I was in the business

and I tried to find it.

I tried, I tried to inspire the owners

that I worked for to find a better way

to be willing to look at better ways.

You know, I, what's the old saying?

How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?

And so how do you change an archaic industry

one little bit at a time?

You know, the little things, the little

changes that I was able to establish

and make at the dealerships that I work at.

Were, were small, but they were,

it was like one small step for man,

one giant step for mankind.

For sure.

It, you know, it was pretty alarming

to some of the owners that I worked for.

But there is a better way and there

and there can be a better way

and there should be a better way.

And we just need more dealer principles

to accept the fact that this whole process

could not only be fun and enjoyable,

but it could, it could be improved so dramatically

that it'll be better for their staff.

It'll be more profitable for the stores

and it'll, it'll make it easier to retain your customers.

But most want to fight that instead of like accept it.

Again, folks, we need your help car edge dot com slash C C B I.

We need about another hundred and fifty responses to this survey

before we've got the number we need to run our new report.

We got to get that done before the end of the month.

So please take three minutes, fill this out again, one hundred percent anonymous.

And while I am on the website, I will do the promo.

We've got our Black Friday special running three hundred dollars off

our car buying service, 30 percent off car edge pro.

Please take advantage of both back on the website.

Car edge dot com dad from no name.

We've got do y'all agree not to talk about four squares

at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

No, no four square talk allowed.

I don't want to talk about the car business around the Thanksgiving dinner table

or any other table to be to be quite honest with you.

Yeah, exactly.

Spending enough time talking about it here from OGG 619.

How do you handle a used vehicle inspection from out of state?

This is a great question.

Yes, there are there are independent contractors out there

that actually do things like that.

And one of the things I would suggest, depending on what type of car

you're looking at, that's out of state, whatever dealer it's at.

Say you're looking at a Toyota and a Honda dealership.

I will call the local Toyota dealership and ask them what they would charge

to do a pre-purchase inspection.

And would it be possible for them to pick up the car

so that they could do that for you?

Yeah, and I know my dad said independent contractors.

I would say there are services out there.

So Lemon Squad is a service.

There might be some like Jane Doe, John Doe, independent type people.

Probably that as well.

But if you're looking for just like a plug and play option,

Lemon Squad is one.

But I like what my dad said a lot called the local dealer that has the same

that represents the same manufacturer and that represents a good

opportunity to get them to take a peek from earlier in the show.

Dad, this is from Robert.

Don't buy prices are already unaffordable.

Going up from here is just more unaffordable.

OEMs must inevitably address high prices.

Wait, this is kind of what you and I have been preaching for years on that.

I'm kind of at its end with it, though, like the manufacturers

have never been able to demonstrate a willingness to lower prices.

And this is the first new model year where we're going to have

the impact of tariffs.

We might not want to talk about it, but they are going to impact MSRPs.

They already are.

And so the fact that the new car industry right now

has such a significant oversupply of inventory.

Again, I'll pull it up on the screen.

We're back to three million vehicles in inventory.

I actually think it's bad advice to tell people who are in the

market to buy a car to wait.

I don't see that getting sweeter in January.

I don't see it getting sweeter in February.

Like, this is your moment.

Listen, the dealers and the manufacturers both know that the two

slowest months of the year are January and February.

They are not going to spend a lot of time, effort and energy,

especially marketing dollars in incentives to keep the product

flowing in January and February.

What they will do and what they are doing is trying to create a

sense of urgency now, especially with so many of the 0% interest

rates that are being offered out there.

So I think with the slowdown in sales in November that perhaps

we will see some enhancements from some of the manufacturers in

some of the incentives for December.

But I don't see the manufacturers being particularly strong

incentive wise coming in January and February.

And it's twofold.

They've already, December is pull ahead month.

Okay.

They know they're pulling ahead of their customers that

we're going to buy a car in January, which is why they

know January is going to be a slow month.

So here's the deal.

If you find something you like now and you can negotiate it

down to the price point that you find acceptable and you can,

if you're financing it, you can finance it at a rate that you

find acceptable and affordable.

Then just buy it.

Okay.

The thought that you want to catch the bottom of the

market typically means you're going to miss it.

I mean, that's typically what happens.

You know, we're waiting for the bottom of the market and before

you know it, you realize, oh, that's already passed.

I kind of sort of missed it.

Now I have to buy it on the upswing.

So I would suggest to you, if you find anything that's

acceptable now, you know you're catching it on the

downswing.

Whether or not you're catching it at absolute bottom

shouldn't matter that difference could be really

insignificant over time.

Insignificant or, especially if you have a trade-in, we know

that wholesale use car value.

But actually, let's see.

Let me pull it up really quickly.

I didn't even look at the most recent black book market

insights.

Let's do it together.

I haven't even looked.

This is live, live, live, live.

It can either tell the right story or the wrong story.

It's going to tell you the story that they continued to decline.

Yeah.

So there you go.

So this is wholesale use car depreciation at the dealer

auctions and we saw another week of .86% depreciation, which

is significantly higher than what we've seen historically,

which is .53.

So what that tells me that is that if you have a trade-in,

definitely making a car deal today makes more sense than

continuing to wait because your trade-in offer is going to go

down significantly.

We have a great guide back in caredge.com, trade-in

tactics for success.

Google search that, chat GPT it.

It'll pop right up.

So yeah, I actually think the calculus is pretty

straightforward.

You do the move today.

You don't anticipate.

And again, we start today's show with another automaker Audi

jacking up the prices of their next model year new vehicle.

We're going to see more and more of that from Tyson.

Thank you, Tyson.

Thank you.

What do you think of the Ford Lightning?

What's thinking about buying one?

But I know the battery tech will bet better in the future.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on the Lightning?

Here's what I think about the Lightning and here's the

thing that you really need to consider.

Ford is in serious discussions about discontinuing the

Lightning altogether.

So that should tell you everything you need to know.

If Ford isn't convinced of the success of that vehicle, I don't

know why you might want to buy one.

Yeah.

Or at least one.

Well, the only way to do it would be to lease it.

Or buy a used one.

And obviously on the use side, it's going to be significantly

depreciated.

Yes.

But Ford is in serious discussions about just

discontinuing that vehicle altogether.

All right, dad, a friendly reminder to everyone.

We've got our promo running.

And more importantly, you should get a free consultation

call with our team.

Go to caredge.com slash concierge.

Scroll down.

Schedule the time to talk to us or have us call you or

just live chat and meet the folks who are working their

butts day in and day out to get deals for our community

members.

I think we were just looking at Nick the other day and it

was like 805,000.

It was 803.

And he closed four more deals.

And now we're at $820,000 in cumulative savings for car

edge customers.

I think Nick, I mean, I don't want to start a little race

here, but I think Nick's going to be the first one to a

million dollars in cumulative savings.

Isn't that incredible?

That really, really is.

And, you know, when you think about the six years

that we've been doing this, I can't even begin to put a

number as to how many, probably hundreds of

millions of dollars we have saved people over the

course of six years by just educating them and

empowering them for when they did go into a

dealership to buy a car.

It's good stuff, man.

It's good stuff.

All right, folks, we are not here tomorrow, but we're

back on Friday.

Black Friday will be here hanging out with you for

more car edge live.

Dad, enjoy the afternoon and look forward to getting

back online with you on Friday.

Yep.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Enjoy your...

Do you want to see the dog on pet sitting?

Oh, we'd love to see the dog your pet sitting.

Okay.

We're going to do a quick little apartment tour.

Is the dog here?

Yeah, yeah, the dog's in the apartment.

Okay.

All right.

So this is my apartment.

This is Jack's apartment.

And by the way, folks, it is a lovely apartment.

It's not an apartment.

He, oh, look at, look at, look at her.

Hi, Lola.

Yeah.

Well, was she on tranquilizers?

She's just chilling, Bev.

Wow.

What a beautiful little girl.

There she is.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you're such a pretty girl.

All right.

Well, there you go.

That's an episode of Car Edge Live.

We're back on Friday, folks.

Love you, Dad.

Yep.

Love you too, handsome.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

See you Friday.

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DO NOT WAIT TO BUY A NEW CAR (Prices Going UP in 2026) | Episode 970

About this episode

Audi Q3

Audi Q5

MSRP

Audi 100

Honda Prelude

new vehicle inventory

dealer inventory

value equation

buyer's market

Honda That Honda

dealer markup

Mazda

BMW

Mercedes

Kia

Hyundai Palisade

oversupply of inventory

new car inventory

discounts

overpriced

Jeep Cherokee

Jeep Grand

Ekbon coding

rebate

cash down

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gross profit

depreciating asset

CarEdge

tariffs

incentives

wholesale used car depreciation

trade-in offer

battery technology

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