SUV market

To the editor:

With all due respect to Lindsay Wilson, who was featured with her 2001 Ford Explorer Sport in your wayward article (July 19) about SUVs being out of favor, as it applies to USED SUVs, nothing is further from the truth.

There are two reasons her vehicle is not selling, neither of which has anything to do with it being a gas-guzzler. First, hardly anyone is looking for a two-door SUV. It is, hands down, one of the coldest vehicles in the market and was when gas was $1.50 per gallon as well. As a 20-year veteran of the used car business, I can also tell you that very few people are interested in any vehicle that has in excess of 125,000 miles for which they are asked to pay more than $2,500.00. A two-door, 130,000 mile Explorer would be a hard sell even in the best of times.

Used SUVs have made up over 50 percent of our total retail sales through the first six months of a record-breaking year. Now is truly a “buyer market” for SUVs. A customer can buy a used SUV for thousands less today than they could have six months ago. Three, or more, thousand dollars in savings could buy a lot of gasoline, even these days! (Interest-free, I might add.)

Thomas Langas,
Lawrence