Dt W News

Mid-year sales reports are in, and the auto industry appears to be reaching pre-recession levels of car sales slowly but surely. In fact, some car dealers are even stating that their new car sales have been so high this summer, they’ve been selling out of new models.

USA Today reports that the average time a new car spent on a dealership lot last month hovered around 30 days or less before a buyer swooped in to pick it up — and considering that car dealers consider 60 days to be an optimum amount of time on a lot, 30 days is pretty impressive. Kelley Blue Book notes that all models, ranging from luxury cars to tiny, fuel-efficient models have been in demand this summer. Consumers have even been leaning toward the traditional gas guzzling sports cars and SUVs, and experts theorize that stable gas prices have a lot to do with recent buying trends. Car sales are predicted to reach about 16.1 million in 2014 — although experts note that sales might actually go as high as 16.8 million — and this summer’s sales reports seem to support the latter prediction.

And although this sales reports focus heavily on June and July sales, as USA Today notes, August tends to be the month with the highest number of car sales each year. Although some dealers have noted that buyers are more than happy to buy new cars without any incentives or ultra-competitive financing plans, TrueCar reports that many dealers have begun offering (or are planning to offer) more cash incentives in order to compete with used car dealers.

Some dealers have already begun beefing up their lots with more models, but it’s worth noting that car manufacturers are still hesitant to increase production; after all, the recession is still pretty fresh in everyone’s minds, and substantially increasing production too quickly could actually hurt the industry and send it spiraling again.

But at the moment, it seems that there really has never been a better time to buy a car.