In 2011, I bought a brand new Chevrolet Equinox in Tulsa for about $21,000.

In 2014, I bought the Chevy Equinox that I now drive in Tulsa for about $22,000.

Both times, it was a new car and the dealer offered me a significant discount because he was trying to make room for the new year models.

I was planning on buying another Equinox (or maybe something else) in 2022 but my plans have changed.

I went on cars.com in the middle of November and started a search for new Chevy Equinoxes within a 25-mile radius of Tulsa.

There weren’t any.

At all.

In fact, the closest new Equinox LS was a single 2021 70 miles from Tulsa. The manufacturer’s price on this car was $28,475 and the price had been dropped to $26,000.

And based on the comments box, it was already sold.

The next three cars were 410 miles away in San Angelo, Texas. And they were not priced, which is unusual for this website.

The next listing was a 2021 Chevrolet Equinox Premier for $31,695. And it was in Illinois (461 miles away).

Later on the list, there was a 2019 Chevrolet Equinox Premier with 11,000 miles for $38,500. Brand new, that car was $40,000. So, more than two years later and with 11,000 miles (in Wyoming, by the way), the price had dropped $1,500.

What is going on?

The Chevy Equinox lines at the GM Cami plant in Canada, the GM San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico and the GM  Ramos Aizpe plant (also in Mexico) were shut down due to a lack of global semiconductor chips as a result of the Chinese coronarvirus pandemic. The GM Cami plant and the GM San Luis Potosi plants were scheduled to restart on November 1 and the GM Ramos Arizpe plant was supposed to return on November 22.

Believe it or not, there reportedly was fewer than a thousand new Chevy Equinoxes on dealer lots in America at the beginning of October.

Why was the Equinox so short when other Chevy models were not? Well, there is a bigger profit margin for the Chevy Silverado and the GMC Sierra pickups plus the Chevy Tahoes and GMC Yukons than for the Equinox.

General Motors makes more money selling those cars, which are more expensive and are more profitable.

You can’t blame GM for wanting to make a buck but you can’t blame me for not buying a new Equinox at this time.

A quick survey of comparable cars on cars.com shows that my 2014 Equinox, with 85,000 miles, is worth between $15,000 – $18,000. That means I might be able to sell it for about $4,000 less than what I bought it for after driving it for almost eight years.

The problem with selling it or trading it in is that it would cost a lot more to replace it with a new Chevy. And I don’t want to get rid of a used car and buy another used car at inflated prices.

So my strategy is to spend a little cash on my current Chevy and wait for more Equinoxes to hit the market in a year (or two). A friend of mine in the car business in Tulsa told me that the availability won’t loosen up until 2024.

I might buy a different car in 2022. I like Buicks but even the Encore prices are through the roof. If I wanted a bigger car, I might look at the Chevy Traverse but they are overpriced right now.

I have two requirements. First, it has to be a new car. Secondly, I have to be able to pay cash.

Except for the past 10 years, I have always had a car payment but I don’t ever want to have another.

I want a car or cars that you can jump in without warning and take a long trip. In the past, I have had cars with more than 160,000 miles and I took a risk every time I drove them out of town.

When I had those cars, we used to rent cars on weekend trips to Branson because of fears of breakdowns on the highways.

I would enjoy having a bigger car but I wouldn’t like getting terrible gas mileage while gas is $3.50 a gallon – thanks to Joe Biden’s war on cheap energy. We don’t put a lot of mileage on our cars – our 2019 Buick Encore only has about 15,000 miles.

Inflation will skyrocket until the Democrats lose control of Congress.

I think the two cars I have now will do fine until was move back to energy independence (and low gas prices) and cars that don’t cost a fortune and are hard to find