Yahoo Autos The End of Presidents Day Car Shopping Specials?
Presidents Day car specials may seem like a recent idea, but they actually date back more than a century.
The holiday weekend deals used to be bigger, but the pandemic and production shortages have meant few to no incentives.
Although the marketplace is in a period of flux, you can expect Presidents Day weekend deals to be few and far between on a national scale.
Long ago, on gloomy February days with the roads a mess, car salespeople in Massachusetts would chain-smoke and complain how few customers came into their showrooms during the coldest, shortest month of the year. But they knew the year's first holiday weekend would drum up business when there wasn't any. Their plan: plaster the airwaves and newspapers with car specials exclusively on Presidents Day weekend. For all the revolutionary history steeped into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, pasting George Washington's face next to an Oldsmobile and handing out Boston Creams and balloons was a signature moment.
"February was a good time to buy a car and a mattress," said John Paul, AAA Northeast's "Car Doctor." "The salespeople were staring at each other playing cards. They said, 'Let's make an event.' "
History, at least how The Boston Globe wrote it in a 1958 obituary on Alvan T. Fuller, attributed the idea of Presidents Day car specials to the Massachusetts governor and Packard dealer. As far back as the early 1900s, Fuller's tactics of balloons, live bands, and personal invitations turned his dealerships into parties and parties into sales. Decades on, dealers ran an "advertising blitz" across newspapers, radio and television in the frenzy of Black Friday, according to Todd Merriam, a partner at accounting firm Withum. And since you're reading this on a phone or a 4K monitor, you well know that newspapers, radio, and television aren't where you look for car listings in 2023.
"It used to be the start of the spring sales season," said Merriam, who works closely with dozens of auto dealerships across New England. "The days of old where manufacturers had to offer deep incentives this time of year, now they don't have to."
