New Year is one of the best times to purchase a new car due to the ‘Plate Clearance Sales’. However, you may be wondering what makes these sales more competitive than others. So, at Corporate Car Brokers, we have broken down the facts about plate clearance sales, so you can find out all you need to know about the offers you’ll come across at the start of this year.
What are Plate Clearance Sales?
The reason why ‘Plate Clearance Sales’ exist is due to the need for car dealerships to get rid of the previous year’s stock in order to make room for the new and upcoming models. Due to this need, there are discounts applied to the previous year's cars, which in this years’ case is 2019. The plate clearance usually starts at the end of the year and moves into the beginning of the next year, in this case, 2020, until most of the stock is sold for the car dealerships.
What is a ‘Plate’?
A ‘plate’ in this case refers to the date stamped on the car's build plate. Amongst other things, the cars build date is what date the car was produced and differs from the compliance date. The compliance date is separate and is usually later than the build date as it determines the model year of a car.
To put this all into perspective, there is usually not much difference between cars built between the end of 2019 and the start of 2020. They might even be sold on the same day! However, due to the ‘build date’ or ‘plate’, the cars built at the end of 2019 will always be classed as an older car due to the build date.
The Pro’s and Con’s
Unless you have a specific need for a car’s build date to be in the current year, there are not many con’s to buying in the plate clearance sales. The plate clearance sales are a time when customers can take advantage of a dealerships’ need to discard older stock and make room for newer stock. Customers can save on huge discounts or receive cashback deals on cars that were produced very recently. Also, keep in mind that cars produced overseas will sometimes take months to even arrive in Australia, meaning that if the build date or ‘plate’ is the end of 2019, at the start of 2020 it has only just recently arrived in the dealership to be sold and is essentially brand new.
Plate Clearance sales usually last until February which is just before the new stocks of cars arrive in the dealerships. That’s why January is one of the best times to take advantage of this particular sale as the dealerships will be pushing to get the cars out the door!
Corporate Car Brokers are experts in plate clearance sales and can help you if you’re looking to find the best deal on a new car. So, if you’re ready to take the next step and take advantage of these offers