Ford May Start Huge Incentives War

If you've been waiting patiently for great end of year deals on new cars, you may be in luck, because a huge incentives war is brewing. Automotive News (a trade publication), got their hands on a confidential memo released to Ford dealers this week. The memo informs dealers that a huge promotion will go into effect starting in November.

The "Friends & Neighbors Pricing Event" is scheduled to go live November 3rd and will run through January 4th. As part of the sales promotion, all Ford vehicles will be discounted to close to invoice price, with some vehicles discounted by as much as 10% off MSRP. That will be the maximum price you will pay for any Ford vehicle (before rebates and other discounts), and dealers are free to discount even further.

This will be the biggest incentives program since 2008's "Employee Pricing for Everyone", which GM launched shortly before they filed for bankruptcy. (Ford recently hired the same guy that was responsible for GM's incentives program - looks like he's doing something similar at Ford now).

The big story here isn't that you'll just be able to get a great deal on Ford vehicles, but it looks like this could finally trigger an incentives war among mainstream car manufacturers - something they've been trying to avoid.

Ford will be doing a lot of advertising for this program, and I'm almost positive other car brands will finally cave in and start offering big incentives programs of their own. If you're in the market for a new car, you may want to wait and see how this plays out in November. Personally, I would wait until the end of November to see how other car manufacturers respond.

I recommend you use TrueCar No Haggle, CarsDirect and NADAGuides to quickly check and see the deals being offered this month vs next month.