that demand will come back fairly well ford motor co chief executive jim hackett said on friday during an online interview with the washington post industry officials have also talked about the need for washington to help certainly we believe that some level of government stimulus post crisis to help customers and the auto industry to recover would be appropriate fords us sales chief mark laneve told reuters last month one wild card for the new vehicle market is the way the coronavirus has disrupted the used us vehicle market where about 40 million cars and trucks change hands a year more than 4 million lowmileage nearlynew lease vehicles are due to return to the market this year at a rate of around 340000 per month that could push used vehicle prices down in the near term hurting new vehicle pricing and demand industry officials said scott cooke chief financial officer of toyotas us captive finance arm said the japanese automaker does not have excess inventory on dealer lots but is seeing a buildup of customers in lockdown states unable to return vehicles that have reached the end of their lease cox automotive economist charlie smoke said late last month that competition for these offlease customers will be fierce with automakers dangling discounts for their business some automakers have extended consumers leases to keep their cars out of the used vehicle market logjam as of late april usedcar auction house manheim a unit of cox was holding about 40 more offlease inventory for corporate customers versus a year earlier rather than flood the market and undercut resale prices george augustaitis director of automotive industry analytics at cargurus inc an online marketplace for new and used cars said automakers captive finance arms have many tools to manage the used car glut from discounts to financing deals and attractive lease programs that can draw people back to the new market augustaitis said the risk for automakers that offer aggressive discounts is that customers will demand them for the long term hurting margins said mark wakefield a managing director at consultancy alixpartners those things are hard to walk back he said but back in texas elder said that with the right attitude and wellplaced discounts the us economy will come roaring back its going to be fun around here again he said reuters published on may 4 2020 at 0735 pm ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etauto app get realtime updates save your favourite articles scan to download app coronavirus impact on us auto sector