Hertz shareholders went from getting nothing to, after a few rounds of competing bidding in bankruptcy, something like $8/share in value including stock and options on the new company.
The big private equity and distressed bidders for the business are quite bullish on the business and its recovery.
A buddy of mine at work bought a '16 Miata last year, right before the pandemic hit. He ended up moving back to Canada and had to ditch the car. He sold it for nearly $3k more than he paid for it - almost unheard of.
Good chart there xerty. I think that answers the question of this thread.
In hindsight I’m not suprrised but I was certainly wrong back 1 year ago. I’d thought the rental companies shutting down would probably keep used car prices down. I wouldn’t have guessed used cars would be UP by 16% for the year.
“The FRED graph above shows that year-over-year growth in used vehicle prices reached 21% in April 2021, up from an already elevated 9.4% in March 2021”
I’d be curious to know what the car prices look like in different used car segments. I doubt that ALL used cars are up a consistent ~21%. The particular model of car I’ve been windowshopping for for many months hasn’t changed that much in price.
HTZ is on the way out of bankruptcy, scheduled for end of the month, and the lenders are happy to back their fleets again now that the covid disaster is mostly behind us.
If I weren’t preoccupied with other things, I’d sell or trade in my brand new car I bought in January. Instant trade in quotes (vroom – so far I only checked vroom and carvana) are higher than my net purchase price. NADA clean trade in is higher than my gross purchase price (before $7500+$2500 back from Fed and state).
In my state you have to trade in to dealer to get TTL credit. Instant quote from one dealer group matches vroom.
I could either trade up to new MY(2021, which just came out this month) of same vehicle for nearly a wash, or maybe trade down to new with higher trim of 2019 MY and extract ~$5k from the transaction.
Clearly the answer to OP was that covid was a HTZ bankruptcy stock buying opportunity. up to $8ish now vs $0.50 lows…
Last two years of Hertz stock
JHC!!! I happily (at the time) got stopped out at 6 some time last spring/summer. 
HTZ is out of bankruptcy as of today. The stock will still be OTC for now, but with a new ticker HTZZ.
Apparently covid is now a car-selling opportunity, with dealers selling more models over MSRP (normally a rare occurrence).
I bought a car 9 months ago. I asked the dealer at the time how busy they were. He indicated that they were as busy as ever. Seemed odd to me but I assumed many were unaffected by pandemic so still buying cars.
Rental cars can be the most expensive and hardest to line up part of a domestic vacation these days. Traveler beware. Meanwhile, used car prices are way up. Long term chart below, last several decades.
Are you factoring in all the title fees and sales taxes? In my state, they clean you for 10% of the car price in sales taxes plus hundreds of dollars of fees to get a plate.
In my state you have to trade in to dealer to get TTL credit.
Yes he was. TTL = tax title license
Point was that if he trades in a car the trade in value counts against the tax/title fees.
If its a wash sale there is net $0 tax consideration.
Yeah that is wild. Whoever is buying that used car at that price is a fool. If anyone wants to execute that trade they better do it quick…I suspect the window will close fast once people realize how foolish they are being.
Well theres a few things there that could lead to such a situation.
Bender got a $2500 state rebate. He’s getting a quote from Vroom which sells nationally. So if you buy a car in TX for $2500 then immediately resell it to Louisiana you’re already up that $2500 state rebate vs what a LA buyer would pay.
Bender might have gotten a great sale deal. Prices are going up on cars lately due to the pandemic. Availability is tight so maybe its hard to get a car at all and good deals are going to be tough to find.
Lastly theres the $7500 fed rebate on the car and most people can’t get all that since its not refundable and won’t carry over.
I’d be interested to see a thread titled “Is Covid-19 a used car selling opportunity?” 
Apparently people have been buying brand new cars and then selling them as used cars at a higher price and pocketing the difference. They are jokingly calling it “carbitrage”. What a crazy market!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-05/cars-cost-more-than-ever-with-sales-slumps-amid-shortages
Backup link
In a year of shortages, the auto industry’s turmoil may be unrivaled. Cars have never been costlier nor flown so quickly off lots. Sales rebounded from 2020’s pandemic disruptions, only to plunge again when a chip scarcity halted assembly lines.
Wife’s car was totaled last month by someone who ran a stop sign (their insurance accepted liability almost immediately). It was a 2018 model purchased in December 2020 and had appreciated about 10% since we purchased it. Crazy times.
We are trying to replace it with the exact same thing, but supply is short. We purchased one at Carvana but the vehicle they brought us had significant damage not described in the listing and we returned it immediately. Then we found a good match at a dealer a few hours away but turns out they’ve been using it as a service loaner which soured our interest. Finally we found a 2019 model with slightly more miles (but still in warranty) in the right price range at Carmax, just waiting for it to be shipped from out of state.
