From the Wall Street Journal, Sales of Used Luxury Cars Rise: “Demand for used luxury cars is remarkably strong compared to the wilting new vehicle market. The trends suggest affluent car buyers aren't paralyzed. But they are searching for a new balance between saving money and hanging on to the lifestyle to which they became accustomed in better times.”
Picking up a used luxury car is a good idea in today’s market where Used Exotics are Going for Honda Accord Money.
So who is pushing certified pre-owned (CPO) in their marketing? BMW, who is mentioned in the article, is running a promotion for 0.9% financing. Lexus is doing a 2.9% promotion n the RX model. Other brands are also providing financing incentives across their CPO fleet.
I did a quick survey to see how the luxury brands promote CPO on their homepages. Of luxury brands in the USA, 77% have CPO links on their main navigation. Some brands make it a bit more difficult to locate pre-owned models. Mercedes-Benz is one who does not include a link to CPO from their main navigation; though, they do promote the content using a link from the main image on the homepage (it’s a simple small-font text link.)
Bentley actually makes the most prominent promotion of their used-vehicle offerings. There are two prominent access points to used car listings. Bentley suffered a new vehicle sales drop of 20% for all of 2008, so moving product, even used is imperative to keep sales going in this economy.
