With new car sales on the slide in Australia, there is an ever-increasing number of cars with no place to call home. Off the boat, and with no room on dealers’ yards, manufacturers are being forced to find storage yards in which to park the excess stock – believed to be nudging 100,000 units nationwide.

Up to 25,000 unsold cars are choking storage yards in Melbourne, the highly visible result of the recent plummet in new car sales. Storage for each vehicle sits somewhere between $1.20 and $2.50 per day, which when looked at nationally is a weekly bill to manufacturers of in excess of $1 million.

Earlier this year, when new car sales were rocketing along at record levels, manufacturers were shipping and building cars with a 30-day turnaround in mind. That’s 30-days between the time the car arrives on the boat, to the car being delivered to a dealer and a buyer being found.

That 30-day turnaround is now a four month turnaround – for the popular models.

All of this means that right now is a great time to buy a new car. While manufacturers race to re-align supply with demand, the opportunity to buy a keenly priced new car has never been better.

[Source: The Age]