What a difference a year makes. Two years ago, we said Memorial Day weekend opened car-shopping season sure as the buds spring. You know how that looked 12 months ago. Now, a year on from that, we’re in an odd limbo between those two extremes, thanks not just to the COVID-19 pandemic but also an ongoing microchip shortage. In short, cars are hard to come by — which means deals are, too.
Related: Car Deals: What’s the Best New-Car Offer for May 2021?
One reliable indication of the demand on new-vehicle sales comes from J.D. Power, which said in late April that it expected transaction prices to reach an all-time monthly record. It also projected incentives to be down 36% versus April 2020 and 11% versus April 2019. We’ve seen similar trends in compiling May’s best deals overall, too.
Still, there’s hope for shoppers. For the list below, we went through the 10 bestselling nameplates in the U.S. through the first quarter of 2021 in an effort to research deals on vehicles where inventory is more likely to be available (or even abundant). They may not look great on paper, but them’s the times — for this year, anyway. Read on for the details.