We’ve all been facing acute challenges over the last few years including Brexit, the Covid pandemic and now the horrific war in Ukraine.
And the global car shortage continues, since Covid lockdowns caused this worldwide scarcity of semi-conductor chips. Because of the dearth of new vehicles (electric, hybrid and petrol), the price for used cars has rocketed making many unaffordable. These semi-conductor chips are vital and no new car can be built without them. Even in petrol and hybrid cars, these clever little technology items are responsible for things such as infotainment, Sat-nav and digital dashboards. They’re even in your key fobs!
The supply chain for semi-conductor chips will take time to recover and it’s likely to be nearing the end of 2022 before we see more cars coming through. Car manufacturers are trying to use fewer chips when building cars but it’s still taking a long time with some manufacturers unable to fulfil orders for vehicles now until 2023. For those cars still in production, the lead time can be in excess of 6 months until it arrives at your front door.
Yes, there is good news here at Newgate. We’ve continued to work hard with our manufacturing and dealership partners to maintain fixed cost motoring for customers. As a result, we are able to secure ‘batches’ of cars available for leasing. These batches can be small with maybe only half a dozen cars and sometimes just one-offs with only one or two cars available. The advantage with these deals is that we can usually get the car more quickly however we can’t guarantee that you’ll get everything on the car that you want, e.g. you might not be able to get your first colour choice. We also have ‘batch deals’ that we know will be coming up in the future with less of a lead time so it’s always wise to keep in touch.
We continue to encourage customers who are about to change their car or potential customers considering a new car to plan well ahead. If you’re going to be changing your car in 6 months’ time, start making decisions about your next car now so that you don’t have the inconvenience of waiting and waiting for your new car to be delivered. Yes, there can still be some unplanned delays but they’re much less likely. Customers looking at our website can often see a car and be undecided. When they do eventually get back to us, they are disappointed as the batch of cars has all gone!
If you’re browsing our website and you see a car that you like, call Nigel now as he can let you know immediately what the lead time is on that particular vehicle. You might opt to go for the car straight away so as not to lose out and you can end your existing agreement early. This advice applies to all petrol, hybrid and electric cars.
Sometimes, we get special offers which we simply don’t have time to load on our website so again, if you are looking for something that you can’t see on our website, phone Nigel or request a call back www.www.newgatefinance.com/get-a-callback/. Nigel always has a ‘shopping list’ with customers’ requests and due to his good network, he is often able to source a particular vehicle or something very similar.
Here at Newgate, we always do our best to help you and we’re also pleased to help your family and friends too so feel free to pass our newsletter to anyone you think might be interested and we can always add their car choice to Nigel’s shopping list…
March 2022
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