{"id":30165,"date":"2019-10-23T19:50:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T17:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/?p=30165"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:48:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:48:06","slug":"what-happens-to-unsold-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/blog\/wat-gebeurt-er-met-onverkochte-autos\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens to unsold cars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever wondered what happens to unsold new cars? Car manufacturers don't just anticipate sales with their production; they deliberately produce more cars than necessary to mask declining demand. As a result, the sales channel is almost clogged with new vehicles, and dealerships worldwide are burdened with thousands of unsold cars.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

World car sales It's about half a percent down<\/a>. In absolute terms, that amounts to a drop in sales of 430,000 cars. But even when car sales were on the rise for years, more was produced than sold. All those unsold cars are now languishing by the thousands in derelict lots all over the world, waiting for a buyer who will probably never come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Type \u2018Dundalk, Maryland\u2019 (USA) into Google Maps, and then zoom in on the grey area in the southwest. No, this isn't a car park or a scrapyard. And like this, there are many such enormous car parks, old airfields, or old industrial sites filled with new cars on this earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sell at a discount?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For car dealers, it is not an option to sell these cars at a hefty discount, as that would come at the expense of selling newer models. Honestly, I would be pretty angry if I heard that my neighbour had bought the same new car as me, but for half the price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Car manufacturers and dealers are not forthcoming about what happens to surplus production. This means we can only hope that they are recycled in some way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devil's dilemma<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For car manufacturers, temporarily scaling back production is not an option, as it would come at the expense of employment. Factories would have to be closed and thousands of workers would lose their jobs. This would have catastrophic consequences for car manufacturers' suppliers, such as steel producers. Furthermore, shutting down a production line usually costs more than continuing production, even if it results in excess inventory. The automotive industry and its supply chain partners are therefore caught in a devil's dilemma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not in sight for the time being<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is no real solution to this problem. New vehicles keep rolling off the production line and stockpiles are only continuing to grow. A typical first-world problem, we could say. Although it goes against all economic logic to produce more cars than can be sold, the end of this problem is not yet in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time will tell.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Car sales are expected to fall further. Partly because cars are being increasingly banned from city centres, younger generations will look for alternative mobility solutions. Porsche is already anticipating this and foresees a future where it might no longer sell cars at all. Would the problem then solve itself? Nevertheless, a great many \u2018old\u2019 cars will still need to be destroyed or recycled.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever wondered what happens to unsold new cars? Car manufacturers don't just anticipate sales with their production; they deliberately produce more cars than necessary to mask declining demand. As a result, the sales channel is almost clogged with new vehicles, and dealerships worldwide are burdened with thousands of unsold cars.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nieuws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30165"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41692,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30165\/revisions\/41692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adremlimburg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}