What is the history of selling say 2025 models in 2024? Why does the car industry do this?
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New cars are defined to being cars with no registered owner. So if you have a 24 sit on a car lot til 25 it is technically still a new car.
Because cars are on a 6 month cycle. Usually in the summer time the 2024 model year will get what’s called a mid cycle refresh.
Its basically marketing, they do it to make people think its more “new.” There are cars that are essentially unchanged from 2019 and before but have a 2025 model year.
It takes time to build and deliver tens of thousands of cars. If they only started the 2025 line of cars on January 1st 2025, we’d be at least many months into 2025 before they started hitting the market. To account for that, they just start selling the 2025 line in 2024.
A big part of it is also just marketing. A lot of people want to buy the latest and greatest thing and if Honda is selling 2025 cars in October they’ll probably have a lot more interest than Nissan selling 2024 cars in October (since 2024 will already “be old” by that point).
If you go to the auction you will see crashed cars two years in to the future.
For example if it is October 2024, there will be 2024s, 2025s and 2026s crashed at the auction for sale.
Ot, but… designers of fashion, jewelry, boats… show models to potential buyers the year before in order to refine and tool the specs to better meet the consumers needs and desires.
Like a movie preview that leads to edits.
Let’s say I’m selling something
Let’s say it has a model that is updated every year, so there’s a year number.
So every year, at some point, I will stop selling my older model and start selling my newer model.
What is the likelyhood that this transition point, with my global manufacturing infrastructure, is always going to land PRECISELY on January 1st?
It won’t.
In fact Jan 1 is a terrible time to launch a product.
New car models are launched past midyear usually in the fall.
Okay but that means we have two naming mismatch scenarios. We have a model car being sold for part of the year either with the number HIGHER or the number LOWER. No way to get around this. It has to be one or the other.
Which do you want for a car buyer looking on the lot in 2024 seeing the most up to date model you have?
Do you want them to see something that says 2023 or 2025?
I think it’s obvious that you want that to read 2025. The alternative looks out of date and not worth spending money on.
Car model years don’t lineup with calendar year, in part because you don’t want new cars hitting showrooms in depths of winter. So usually fall is when new models come out, and they use the upcoming year because it’s seems fresher/forward thinking for a 2024 model to be released in October of ‘23 than a 2023 model to debut as year’s almost over. Sometimes a model is released earlier in the year than fall, but still same forward looking scenario is used unless it’s really early in the year and/or there was a delay that pushed into new year.
The 1946 Studebaker went on sale in October 1945. “First by far with a post-war car.” Because Studebaker’s own military designs were cast in stone, their design and process people didn’t have a whole lot to do during the war. Reportedly they had been planning a new model since the middle of 1944. On VE Day the decision was taken to finalize the design and start tooling up. The rest of the industry was stunned that tiny Studebaker was ready with a new model so soon after VJ Day.
This might have carried on for just a few years if we’re not for the advent of television. Even before we figured out what to do with the medium, as the weather turned cooler and more people were staying at home there was a cluster of high profile television programs scheduled in the autumn. This was the time to promote your new, or newly revised, cars.
FDR, funnily enough. [Here](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15345331/americas-next-top-model-year-or-why-new-car-model-years-arent-in-sync-with-the-calendar/)’s an article explaining how and why.
It’s also mostly an American thing. No-one in Europe is calling it a 2025 BMW 3-series, it’s just a 2024 BMW 3-series.
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