Aged stock is the most expensive problem on the forecourt that nobody put on a budget line. Every day a car sits past its sell-by point, it costs you floor plan interest, depreciation, and the use of capital you could have put into a car that actually moves.

The instinct is to wait. "It'll go." Sometimes it does. More often the car drifts from 60 days to 90 to 120, the market keeps softening underneath it, and what could have been a small markdown becomes a real loss.

This is a triage playbook. The aim is to act on every aged car deliberately - re-merchandise, reprice, reallocate, or wholesale - based on two questions: how much margin is still at risk, and how much demand is left. And at the end, how to stop most of it happening in the first place.

First, name the problem honestly

Pull a list of every car at 60 days or more. For each one, write down three numbers:

  • Days in stock - the real figure, from the day it was bought, not the day it was advertised.
  • Current standing value - what comparable cars are actually selling for now, not what you paid or what you hoped.
  • Margin at risk - the gap between your standing value and your total cost in the car, including reconditioning and the holding cost it's already racked up.

That third number is the one that changes behaviour. A car you paid well for with healthy headroom can take a sharper price cut and still bank a profit. A car you overpaid for is already underwater, and every extra week deepens the hole. They are not the same problem and they don't get the same treatment.

The triage decision tree

Work each aged car through four options, in order. Stop at the first one that fits.

Option 1 - Re-merchandise (the car is fine, the advert isn't)

Before you touch the price, rule out the cheapest fix: the car is fine, but it's being presented badly.

A surprising share of aged stock is well-priced but poorly merchandised. Check:

  • Photos. Are there enough? Are they clean, well-lit, and showing the interior, the load space, and any standout features? A car with six dark photos competes badly against the same model with thirty good ones.
  • The description. Does it list the spec that buyers actually search for - towbar, heated seats, the right trim level, full service history?
  • Data accuracy. Wrong trim, missing options, or a mismatched mileage will quietly bury a listing and lose trust when a buyer spots it.

If a car has been live for weeks with weak photos and a thin description, fix that first and give it a short, defined window - say seven to ten days - before you move on. You may be sitting on demand you've been hiding.

Option 2 - Reprice to the live market

If the merchandising is solid and the car still isn't moving, the price is out of step with the market. This is the most common cause of aged stock and the most fixable.

The rule: price to the live market, not to your cost. What you paid is sunk. What matters is where comparable cars are changing hands today, and where your car sits in that pack.

When you reprice:

  • Move decisively, not in timid increments. Three £200 trims over six weeks just signal to the market that the car is stale. One confident move to a genuinely competitive number does the work.
  • Aim to land in the part of the market where cars actually sell - usually not the absolute cheapest, but clearly inside the buying band for that spec and mileage.
  • Use margin at risk to set the floor. A car with headroom can chase the market down and still profit. A car that's underwater needs a different conversation, which is options 3 and 4.

Option 3 - Reallocate the car

Sometimes the car is right and the channel is wrong.

A car that's slow at one site might be in demand at a sister site in a different catchment. A spec that's oversupplied locally might be scarce two regions over. Reallocation options worth checking:

  • Move it between sites in a group to a market where that model and spec are in demand.
  • Widen the channel. Make sure the car is on every marketplace and channel you use, not just one. A car that's invisible can't sell.
  • Reposition the offer. A car that's hard to sell on price alone may move as a finance-led deal where the monthly payment lands well, even if the headline price doesn't.

Reallocation buys you a fresh audience without taking the wholesale haircut - but give it a deadline. If it doesn't move in the new channel quickly, it's a wholesale car.

Option 4 - Wholesale and recycle the cash

Some cars are not retail cars anymore. The demand has gone, the supply is heavy, or the car is underwater and getting worse. The worst thing you can do is hold them out of hope.

Wholesale when:

  • Days in stock are pushing past 90 and the previous steps haven't moved it.
  • Margin at risk is negative and the trend says it gets worse the longer you hold.
  • The capital tied up in the car would earn more in a faster-moving buy.

A clean break at a small loss is almost always better than a slow bleed. The point of wholesaling isn't to "lose money" - it's to recycle dead capital into a car that earns. Measure the win not just by the loss on the unit, but by what the freed-up cash and forecourt space go on to make.

Run it as a weekly cadence, not a fire drill

Aged stock clearance fails when it's an occasional panic. It works when it's routine.

  • Weekly aged-stock review. Every car at 60+ days gets looked at, every week, and assigned an action: re-merchandise, reprice, reallocate, or wholesale. No car gets to coast.
  • Set exit deadlines. Each action gets a date. If a repriced car hasn't moved by then, it escalates to the next option automatically.
  • One owner. Someone owns the aged list and reports on it. Shared responsibility means no responsibility.

The real fix: stop cars becoming aged in the first place

Here's the uncomfortable truth about most aged stock: by the time a car hits 60 days, the easy money is already gone. The market value has slipped, the strongest buyers have moved on, and your options have narrowed to repricing and wholesale.

The cars piling up at 90 days almost all sent warning signs at 20 and 30 days - slower-than-expected views, thin enquiries, comparable cars discounting around them. The problem was that nobody was watching the early signals, so nothing happened until the car was already a problem.

The shift that prevents aged stock isn't a better clearance process. It's catching cars early:

  • Spotting a car tracking behind its expected days-to-sell at 20 to 30 days, while a small merchandising fix or modest price nudge can still save the margin.
  • Seeing margin at risk move before it turns negative, not after.
  • Acting while you still have every option open, instead of when wholesale is the only exit left.

Clear the cars over 60 days with the triage above. But the bigger prize is making sure next quarter's aged-stock list is half the length - because you caught the cars while they were still cheap to fix.

Most dealers don't lack the will to act early - they lack the early warning. Days-to-sell and margin-at-risk usually surface in a monthly report, long after the moment to intervene has passed.

VehIQ is built to make those signals live. By layering inventory intelligence over your existing stock data - days-to-sell estimates, margin-at-risk flags, and the demand context behind them - it puts the warning on the car at day 20, not the post-mortem at day 90. The aged-stock playbook still matters. The goal is to need it far less often.