September May Not be a Good Time to Buy a Car

Normally when sales are this bad, dealers are desperate and willing to negotiate deals. Not so in this case. The "Cash for Clunkers" program ended up depleting dealership inventory at a time when manufacturers had already scaled back production.

The result? There are now less than 1.5 million new cars available for sale in the entire United States. This is by far the lowest figure ever recorded since stats were first compiled 18 years ago.

The good news, from a car buyer's perspective, is that dealers are reporting very low foot traffic in their showrooms. In addition, car manufacturers have been ramping up production in order to replenish depleted inventory.

The problem is, it's going to take at least a month before inventory piles back up at dealer lots. For now, most dealers are ok with the fact that there are very few buyers. They simply don't have many cars to sell, so from their prospective, they're not losing any money.

Wait just a couple of months and we're pretty sure dealers will begin getting desperate again as their inventory starts piling up.

Note however, that not all cars are low in inventory. Cars that didn't qualify for the "Cash for Clunkers" program can still be found in large quantities. It's mostly the fuel efficient cars you want to stay away from at the moment.