Advertisement
Weekly Newsletter
Business workout specialist Joseph Luzinski of DSI talks about turning round troubled dealerships

In October 2012 the Toyota dealership in St Augustine, Florida, entered  Chapter 11 administration and the court appointed a chief restructuring officer from workout specialists DSI Inc..  According to the local Orlando district bankruptcy court, the owners had got into trouble a...
READ
Dealers had a very profitable start to the year

Typical dealer margins grew strongly year on year in January, according to data just released by NADA.Net profit before tax of an average dealership rose 24.6  percent year-on-year in January to an average margin of 2.1 percent.  That was just below the 2.2 percent recorded for 2...
READ
Edmunds.com TCI data shows incentives flat in March

Edmunds.com’s “True Cost of Incentives”  (TCI) data for March showed an industry that is not struggling to maintain sales volumes – in fact, the industry average TCI barely budged between February and March, at $2398 per unit in March, compared with $2,397 per unit in February...
READ
Hispanics Are Revving Automotive Industry Growth

Jonathan M. Bernard and Sara Hasson   The Hispanic community today accounts for over 52 million people in the United States, or 17 percent of the entire U.S. population. The Census Bureau projects that by 2020, there will be nearly 66 million Hispanics in the country, accoun...
READ
New entrants will drive diesel growth despite fuel's high price

Diesel has cleaned up its act and more U.S. shoppers are willing to consider it when shopping for a vehicle.  Dealers who will be selling the new diesel models should be ready to market its benefits to consumers, said Alec Gutierrez, senior market analyst at KBB.com. “They shou...
READ
GM's EBE program pays off, says dealer

General Motors doesn’t use a big stick to encourage its dealers to employ the Essential Brand Elements program at their stores.  It uses a big carrot – big payments to stores that have meet the EBE requirements.“In Fremont alone we had nearly $90,000 (in payments) in the fourth ...
READ
Toyota's Ernest Bastien on investment for renovation, standardization, and the dealership of the future

Toyota Motor Sales USA doesn’t seem to be in a  hurry to make all of its 1,233 U.S. dealers renovate in line with its Image USA II program.  The program was launched in 2004 and by the end of 2012 only 53% of Toyota’s dealerships were Image USA II compliant.   The s...
READ
Ford Plans New Top-End Raptor

Luxury full-size pickups are hot sellers, and Ford Motor Co. is giving dealers another high-performance luxury model to meet that demand.This fall, the 2014 F-150 SVT Raptor Special Edition will be available in a two new colors with a new Luxury Package.“It adds a halo to the brand,” D...
READ
Wave of the Future?

By Nancy Phillips  As a result of the most recent crises in our industry, the surprising number of dealers that began contemplating selling are just now emerging from hibernation to act on their desire to divest. Dealers don’t sell in a comatose market unless forced, because th...
READ
A competitive gap opening up between big and small dealership groups could change the make-up of the retail scene

The nation's 10 largest dealership groups, including the six publicly-owned companies, have long held a relatively small percentage of the total number of U.S. stores -- about 10 percent. But that could soon change in a big way, said Group 1 CFO John Rickel at a Morgan Stanley investor con...
READ

Pages

Sign up for our free newsletter