A lot of it is tied to production commitments. Once the pipeline is full, they react, but by then dealers have already been carrying the burden for months.

It feels like incentives are being used to protect certain models rather than move metal. Some of the slowest units in our inventory have the least support.

To actually answer the question about how decisions get made: incentive strategy at most OEMs runs through a monthly or quarterly cadence that involves finance, product planning, and sales ops in a room together. Finance controls the ceiling because every incentive dollar comes off margin and the quarterly earnings impact is tracked closely. Product planning weighs in on where a model sits in its lifecycle because aggressive incentive support on a nameplate that is 18 months from a refresh signals the wrong thing to conquest buyers and to existing owners who just bought. Sales ops pushes for the models with the highest days supply. The result of those three forces pulling in different directions is exactly what you are seeing from the outside. The models getting support are the ones where all three stakeholders agreed. The ones sitting without support usually have a finance or product planning objection that sales ops cannot override.

Incentive decisions also get caught in regional versus national tension. National sets the program. Regional field teams see the actual inventory problem earlier and flag it up. That flag has to travel through a reporting structure, get validated with data, get put on the agenda for the next planning cycle, and then survive a finance review before anything changes.

Great breakdown of the internal friction behind these decisions.