Sales began to slow toward the end of 2000 but the rebates continued as American automakers moved to clear out overflowing inventories. Sales so far in 2001 are brisk despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the stock market and the economy and incentives are plentiful. No one knows how long the current economic downturn will last or how much it will affect car sales this year. Manufacturers are reluctant to ease up on incentives for fear of losing sales to competitors with aggressive rebates and incentives. Everybody's going to talk about cutting incentives, but nobody's going to be willing to do it.
Big incentives seem to be everywhere.
Once one manufacturer rolls out a new rebate program, the others follow. Even relatively fast-selling vehicles have been buffed up with rebates so they won't appear overpriced next to their heavily discounted rival vehicles. There's always somebody doing them. It's great for you and me as consumers. Ore. That's a 42-percent increase.