News

Van Horn Automotive Group has not acquired any dealerships in 2022, but nonetheless was involved in a transaction in which its majority owner shifted from one person to nearly 400 of its employees.

Van Horn Automotive employees previously owned 30 percent of the company as part of an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, which launched Dec. 31, 2015. The company opted to launch the plan in part to help boost hiring and retention and add to its dealership count. It can also help with succession planning, ESOP experts say.

In March, Van Horn Automotive's majority owner and co-CEO Chuck Van Horn left to focus on Van Horn Development, a separate real estate development and property management company and the automotive group's employee ownership rose to 77 percent.

"It was basically just Chuck's way of exiting the business," said Jeff Niesen, president at Van Horn Automotive, of Plymouth, Wis. "When he sold his percentages [to the ESOP], the way we had t…

Mounting financial losses, a plunging stock price, nervous creditors and regulatory roadblocks in several states have online used-car giant Carvana Co. on the ropes as it enters 2023 with used-market conditions in decline and facing doubts about its ability to survive without major restructuring.

Carvana must tread carefully in the early months of 2023 as it tries to reduce cash burn, cut costs and squeeze more profit from each used car and truck it sells, say financial analysts closely watching the former stock market darling.

This year has marked a severe tumble for Carvana from the euphoric heights it reached in 2021, when its market valuation at one point topped $60 billion and investors were eager to go along for the ride. Now, Carvana's market capitalization is below $1 billion after a year in which a slowing market, soaring inflation and interest rate spikes shackled its growth plans. The company made sweeping job cuts in May and again i…

Carvana faces ultimate challenge in new year

When you see a stock fall by 98 percent, questions are going to come up.

When a company restructures its staff twice in a year, one has to wonder.

When a still-young company loses about half a billion dollars in each of three straight quarters, you have ask: Are these guys gonna make it?

As we near the end of this 2022 that has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for Carvana, the online, used-vehicle retailer, reporter C.J. Moore set out to ask that fundamental question — and the others surrounding it — in this week's front-page story:

■ Is Carvana getting tossed around simply because its business is concentrated on the most-challenging part of the consumer-facing auto industry?

■ Or does it have special liabilities, such as under-developed title processing, that acts as a bottleneck on growth?

■ Did the acquisition of ADESA's physical auction business stretch the co…

A Cox Automotive employee was shot on an interstate near Birmingham, Ala., following "road rage" on Dec. 15, according to local police.

Vestavia Hills Police Department responded to a report of a person shot on Interstate 65 at about 7 a.m. on Thursday, according to a Facebook post from the department. Vestavia Hills is 13 miles south of Birmingham.

One person was injured and taken to a Birmingham hospital, where they were treated and released, according to the post. Cox Automotive confirmed the person is a Cox Automotive Mobility Fleet Services mobile technician in an email statement to Automotive News.

"We can confirm that our driver was the victim of an incident that occurred earlier this morning. At Cox Automotive, we are committed to the safety of our team members," Cox Automotive wrote in a Dec. 15 statement. "We are fully cooperating with local law enforcement on their ongoing investigation and ask that you contact them for more information."

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Hanging on a wall in my home office is a framed copy of the last Sunday magazine The Dallas Morning News published, featuring a cover story written by me. Framed along with it is a tongue-in-cheek letter from the executive editor at the time saying it couldn't be officially determined whether my excessive freelance writing for the magazine led to its demise.

I was a woefully underpaid young reporter (a redundant phrase, to be sure) at the Morning News and would try to pad my city desk salary by taking extra work writing for the magazine.

Thirty-some years later, here I am again witness to another magazine ceasing publication. After a lot of discussion at Automotive News, the decision was made to stop publishing Fixed Ops Journal. This issue will be the last.

But unlike the Sunday magazine, there is a second act for Automotive News' coverage of service, parts and collision. More about that in a minute.

The decision t…

Aston Martin has reached the top — of its 66-story condominium tower in Miami.

Five years into a project originally scheduled to be done in 2021, the Aston Martin Residences is finally nearing completion. The 816-foot-tall building is advertised as the tallest residential tower south of New York.

The 391-unit building is 97 percent sold out. Now, the developer is offering the three-story penthouse for $59 million, a price that includes a rare Aston Martin Vulcan.

The 7,300-square-foot, seven-bedroom penthouse is the subject of a limited-edition art book titled "Unique." The leather-bound book contains a QR code linking to a musical score composed by a 10-piece orchestra at the developer's behest "to capture the mood and ambiance of the residences," according to Forbes. Whoever buys the penthouse gets a custom-made lectern matching the penthouse design to hold the 10-pound book and use of a calligrapher to personalize the final six pages.

The tri…

Once flush with easy money, investors have soured on investing in electric vehicles and other mobility startups amid uncertain economic conditions. The total amount invested in the moblity tech sector dropped by 79 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2022, according to the latest figures from financial services firm PitchBook.

Going forward, investors expect investment in transportation tech to continue, albeit at a more deliberate pace and with startups facing more scrutiny from prospective backers.

Global economic headwinds, rising borrowing rates and the recent struggles of startups that went public via special-purpose acquisition companies have brought a heightened sense of cautiousness among venture capital firms, experts told Automotive News.

"The funding spigot is almost turned off," said Quin Garcia, co-founder and managing director of Bay Area venture-capital firm Autotech Ventures. "But VCs have a ton of dry po…

Most new-vehicle service departments are slammed. It's a perfect storm of customers keeping older cars longer, in part due to inventory shortages; vehicles on the road outpacing the number of service bays available; and underutilized shop capacity.

As a result, lengthy wait times, carryover tickets and frustrated customers are more a norm than an aberration. Increasing capacity is key, but this doesn't have to mean expanding facilities and hiring moretechnicians (nearly impossible in this market). Instead, a few small steps can increase efficiency and drive capacity without a big outlay of cash.

Increasing capacity first requires knowing a service facility's maximum potential. Calculate your facility's potential with this formula endorsed by NADA: number of bays x number of days x number of hours x effective labor rate = facility potential. In this formula, the number of bays excludes wash and undercoat bays. The figure for "days" is the total n…