The disaster in Japan could slow shipments of popular SUV’s from Toyota and Honda. Buyers will now face sticker prices on Japanese makes which will give a boost to dealers like BMW, Land Rover and Volvo, instead of enjoying discounts that had been the norm for SUV’s imported from Japan that include Honda’s CR-V and Toyota’s Forerunner. New SUV’s are losing their typical discounts from Dealers of Japanese models.
The price increases “will last weeks, if not months,” says Jesse Toprak on a website that tracks what vehicles sell for at dealerships. Dealers are acting on the possibility that disruptions in SUV deliveries from Japan will cause a shortage of higher-demand vehicles. Demand will exceed supply so they aren’t likely to cut deals on those particular SUV’s. Many smaller SUV’s are built in Japan, where manufacturing has halted in the wake of the tsunami and looming nuclear crisis.
Toyota shut down production at least until Tuesday and Honda remains closed without stating when it plans to restart. A shipment of more than 1,000 Nissans headed to the United States was destroyed.
The disruption in supply from Japan, will put Land Rover in an advantageous situation regarding its current expansion in Thailand”, says LandRoverOnline.com.
“Prices have firmed up, and the tsunami crisis is only going to help that,” says a Los Angeles-area expert who runs Honda dealerships. Sentiment from dealers is that they are going to run out of popular models and are no longer willing to make deals on existing models. A Honda spokesman says the automaker is still assessing the impact of the Japan crisis on its supply,
Used SUV’s should be affected as higher prices on new SUV’s will mean higher prices on used ones, This will benefit owners of Toyota and Honda trading in vehicles towards a new Land Rover or BMW. Once supplies of small SUV’s and hybrids tighten, dealers avoid negotiating on price, Dealers are paying up at auction especially for Toyota and Honda and it results in a higher price for Japanese makes and relative value for their competition,
