Car Shopping

PTO today and the start of a 3-day weekend. What to do with that time?  Several chores around the house that had been nagging; taking some docs to the credit union to put in the safe deposit box; taking Nora to the vet for treatment of her URI.  Her weight has dropped from 15 to 13.4 pounds, which is encouraging.  Give a homeless, starving cat access to food, and it tends to eat like there's no tomorrow.  Now that she's 8, we really need to get that excess weight off her, for her joints, for her blood sugar.  

And, around 3:00, we drove to a car dealer to look at 2023 models now, with the intention of buying one later in summer as a leftover when the 2024 models are released.  Well, I was under a misapprehension, and I was quickly disabused of that old-fashioned notion by Joe, the old-school salesman who spotted us gaping at the showroom with a puzzled expression, wondering why there were no cars in it.

Remember the pandemic, and how hard it was at times to find products?  (Flour, sugar, pasta were especially in short supply at the beginning.  For us, for a longer period, it was cat food.)  Now, think about something much more complicated with a much-more-involved supply chain.  

There's demand, but hardly any supply, Joe told us.  You order a car and you wait for months until the company has all the parts -- particularly the chips -- to build it.  One company is giving its customers only one keyless fob.  The chip that would go in the backup fob is instead going into someone else's primary fob. 

Here's where it's good not to be young.  Experience says that after a shortage comes a glut.  The meat shortage in the 70's, the oil embargo by OPEC, and about any other shortage you can name.  For awhile earlier in the decade, houses were selling for 10-20% more than the realtor's price, but that's not happening anymore. In a free market, after nothing comes the deluge.  

So my car's paid off and I have no intention of paying $10,000 over sticker price just to drive away in a new car.  Let's wait a while and see how things play out.