Trade News

The first of the year is the perfect time to build a forecast based on what's possible if we focus on the details that drive profitability. Most dealers start that process by evaluating the performance of all the different profit centers of the dealership: car sales, finance and insurance (F&I), parts, and the service department and body shop. The result? A prediction for the growth expected from each department and a clear idea of what investments could accelerate that growth.

However, this careful assessment and the resulting plans often don't trickle down to reinsurance or participation programs. The truth is that the performance of every other department directly impacts your reinsurance program. If you start viewing your reinsurance and participation programs as additional profit centers, there are several significant opportunities to improve overall performance. As we begin 2022, take the time to consider how you can optimize the way you do business.

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It's a simple concept: You can't sell cars you don't have. Inventory is essential for success. And, as we've always said at vAuto, you make money when you buy a car, not when you sell it. So buying cars right is the key to used-car profitability. Yet inventory shortages plague dealers nationwide. Given the unprecedented and prolonged volatility in the pre-owned vehicle market, dealerships continue to struggle to fuel their inventory pipelines.

This new normal has made the traditional methods for replenishing used-vehicle inventory insufficient to meet demand in the market. As the landscape evolves, it can be difficult to keep up with the changes.

We talk with hundreds of dealers across the country every month, and the following recommendations are what we see as common best practices to help dealership management teams weather supply constraints with confidence while building an inventory pipeline poised for profitability and significant grow…

The vision Ford Motor Co. leaders had in 2018 when the automaker bought the shell of Detroit's long-abandoned Michigan Central Station is starting to come together.

During a media tour last week, Ford showed off the progress that has been made in the more than three years since the automaker paid $90 million for the hulking depot and adjacent properties.

The train station, shuttered in 1988, was the symbol of Detroit's late 20th century decline and had been stripped of its precious metals.

Rain, ice, sleet and snow deteriorated the plaster and terra cotta tile over time — parts of the original building that are slowly being restored with painstaking detail, said Rich Bardelli, construction manager for the project. After Ford took ownership of the station, its construction contractors spent a year stopping leaks and building an HVAC system to dry out the waterlogged structure. More than 1,700 of the Guastavino terra cotta ceiling t…

Tesla's upward trajectory among premium brands is ready for a fresh boost with the start of production at its nearly finished plant in Austin, Texas. But the electric auto maker may have already snatched the U.S. luxury crown from BMW.

While the traditional top three luxury marques have posted their final U.S. sales for 2021, Tesla does not break out domestic sales from its global numbers. That means U.S. new-vehicle registration data, which lags several weeks behind sales, is needed to tell the full story of the year's luxury-market sales race.

Financial data firm Experian released the latest batch of U.S. registration numbers last week, corresponding to November. It paints a promising picture for Tesla in its battle with BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz.

Tesla's November registration surge of 42,314 new vehicles brought its 11-month total to 303,246, Experian said. At the start of this year, BMW reported total 2021 sales of 336,644, b…

Beth Beans Gilbert says she did everything with her dad, Fred, when she was growing up. At age 12, she went to work with him, spending the summer at the family’s Ford dealership. After seeing him on the job, she says, “I wrote him a letter and mailed it to him — and told him I wanted to be him when I grew up. I wanted to be ‘a great dealer,’ I told him.” Gilbert is well on her way to achieving that goal. Today, she is vice president of Fred Beans Automotive Group in Doylestown, Pa., which has more than 1,700 employees at 21 dealerships, a parts warehouse, collision and quick service centers and a car rental business. “When I look back, I think I took advantage of everything that came my way,” says Gilbert. “I was going to sales things with my dad when I was in my teens.” After college, she went to the National Automobile Dealers Association Academy, then spent time working for Carter Myers’ Virginia dealership business. “Dealer Academy was great training. After tha…

Out of the frying pan, and into the electric truck race

The years of "employee pricing for everyone" seem approximately three lifetimes ago at this point.

The discounts were extremely popular, but they also furthered the perception that the Detroit 3 only built cars and trucks people bought because they were cheap. Over and over, executives promised to introduce models that didn't need huge incentives, only to slap huge incentives on those same vehicles a few months later because they were piling up on dealership lots. It was a damaging, predictable cycle that decimated the companies' profits and contributed to the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler once the economy crumbled.

That's all changed. The microchip shortage that starved many dealers of new-vehicle inventory is a big reason, but all three companies already had overhauled their product lineups and greatly reduced their reliance on discounting since being humbled during the Great Rece…

The managing director of last fall’s Charge Across America competition discusses the cross-country race, and what it reveals about the state of U.S. infrastructure at a time electric vehicle sales are proliferating.

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A partnership between publicly traded conglomerate Graham Holdings Co. and Chris Ourisman of Ourisman Automotive Group has expanded to four dealerships since early 2019, and the executives behind the pairing aim to continue the growth.

Last month, Graham and Chris Ourisman bought a Ford dealership in Manassas, Va., marking Graham Ourisman Automotive's fourth dealership in three years. The store, Battlefield Ford of Manassas, which boasts a strong commercial truck business, was purchased Dec. 28 from Steve Fay of Battlefield Automotive, and the dealership was renamed Ourisman Ford of Manassas.

"It's just such a high-performing dealership that there was certainly appeal for us because of the size of it," Ourisman said. "It just felt like a great tuck-in for what we are building out in the Washington, D.C., metro market."

Ourisman told Automotive News that the dealership included a "great team already in place, a team that's got really great results that w…

DETROIT — General Motors plans to add hundreds of employees to its software-defined vehicle team by the end of this year.

CEO Mary Barra called for applications during her CES keynote this month, when she outlined the automakers' electric vehicle plans, software ambitions and future vehicle concepts.

The majority of the new hires would join the company's software-defined vehicle space, the automaker's biggest growth area, said Sim Gill, engineering business manager for GM's software-defined vehicle business unit.

The new hires could work in Detroit, California, Canada, Israel or remotely from around the globe. In April, GM launched a new remote-work standard to give employees the flexibility to work from wherever they are most efficient and to give GM access to a broader talent pool beyond its office locations.

Among the team's biggest projects is GM's Ultifi platform, which is a crucial piece of the automaker's goal to boost revenue through soft…

Polestar's plan to go public this year via a merger with the special-purpose acquisition company Gores Guggenheim forced the Volvo Cars subsidiary to do something it had declined to do since it was born in 2017: provide detailed sales and financial targets.

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said that revealing the electric car maker's midterm plan — which includes boosting sales to 290,000 by 2025 from 29,000 last year and reaching breakeven in 2023 — was "absolutely terrifying." But making its targets public has been a great motivator, he added.

He also explained how Polestar was spared from the worst of the chip crisis and revealed a big change the company has made in the U.S. during an interview with Automotive News Europe Managing Editor Douglas A. Bolduc. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: Polestar has provided a detailed sales and financial outlook for 2021-25. Was that terrifying or liberating?

A: It's absolutely terrifying. But this is required if …