Yahoo Autos For Luxury Automakers, It Actually Is December to Remember
Luxury automakers are increasingly offering incentives in the month of December, using a variety of marketing tactics involving snow, family, and holiday imagery.
Many of the incentives go through January 2 and include leasing and financing deals.
It's not just holiday spirit; automakers do considerably better in the last month of the year than in the two months prior.
Do people actually buy high-end vehicles as Christmas gifts? Whether that's the reason for the purchase or not, luxury automakers—BMW, Audi, Land Rover, Lexus, and others—have increasingly made it a year-end tradition to roll out deals and incentives in December, and it's a tactic that has contributed to increased sales.
By this point in the season, you've probably seen so many of their holiday-themed car ads that they're all starting to run together. They may have interesting euphemisms for "year-end markdowns" like "December to Remember" and "Season of Adventure," but they're essentially incentivized deals on sales, leasing, and financing. And some of them, beyond the oversize bows and the snowflake imagery, actually can bring down the cost of a new vehicle by thousands of dollars.
Sometimes they're intended just to clear out the previous model year's inventory by New Year's Eve, such as in the case of the 2019 Ford Fusion sale announced this week that cuts the mid-size sedan's price by 20 percent. Many luxury brands have incentives on both 2019 and 2020 model year vehicles, with the best deals coming on prior-year new cars. For instance, BMW currently has an offer of up to $4500 on select vehicles, and Infiniti is offering up $4000 credit on certain models. Even Aston Martin is getting in on the game with a "Joyful and Triumphant" sale, advertising a no-money-down lease on the Vantage with payments of $1699 a month. Automakers' advertised incentives frequently include both leasing and financing deals, most of which end on January 2.
