When you properly take care of your vehicle, it often lasts longer and you have the potential to get more miles and time out of your investment. Routine preventative maintenance can also help you avoid some major repairs, saving your time, money, and hassle down the road.
Why is maintaining your car so important right NOW?
Potential savings on auto repairs plus a vehicle that lasts longer might be incentive enough for you to schedule regular maintenance appointments at your local auto repair shop. But is there any other reason why maintaining your car is so vital at this specific point in time? Yes!
Throughout the pandemic, perhaps you noticed that new car lots looked a little emptier than normal. Thanks to a variety of factors including manufacturer shutdowns and chip shortages, fewer cars were actually produced. What did people do if they needed a different vehicle but a new one wasn’t available? They turned to buying used cars, leading to both high prices and shortages in the used car market.
As our society returns to a new normal after the pandemic, new car production is still catching up and prices remain high. In some cases, new car prices have increased so much over a short period of time that a new trend has emerged – car flipping. Rather than buying a new car and driving it for several years before trading in, some people are buying new cars and then selling them a few months later at a higher price.
Used cars also continue to fetch record high prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, used vehicles currently cost 53% more than they did at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. That means you may still pay less than the price tag for a new car but you’ll likely pay more and get less compared to pre-pandemic days.
