Ultimately, the only winners will be the local dealerships and car makers who use the Internet to get more customers and strengthen their customer relationships by providing additional services after the vehicle is sold. I'M NOT THE KIND OF PERSON...
James Mancuso was a dealer well ahead of his time. He advocated and practiced customer service, customer satisfaction and fair dealing before those attributes became industry standards. Yet while championing fair play for the customer, he also...
New NADA Chairman Robert J. Maguire urges GM to stop blaming dealers for corporate miscues, prods DaimlerChrysler to meet more often with NADA leaders and scolds Ford for its controversial Blue Oval program. He says in his inaugural speech that...
Many dealers fail to market used vehicles as effectively as they could, despite growing customer interest in pre-owned cars. So says Rik Kinney, reporting on Dohring Co.'s 2001 survey of consumer preferences and buying habits. My advice to dealers...
Toyota Motor Sales is assembling what it expects to be the largest virtual network in the automotive industry Dealer Daily. Once this new system is installed and operating in most Toyota and Lexus dealerships, the manufacturer expects to use it...
Put a dealer on General Motors' board of directors (Editor's note: A veteran Florida dealer asked us to publish a letter he wrote to GM CEO G. Richard Wagoner. The following are excerpts. The dealer wishes to remain anonymous.) I have seen...
In a month that saw more than 10,000 workers laid off from Internet firms, a new player emerged in the increasingly crowded online parts ordering market: The Big Three. Less than a year after DaimlerChrysler AG, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors...
Wes Lutz is going to extremes. It's not as radical as it sounds. But what the Jackson, MI dealer is doing is pretty wild in a lot of respects advertising and otherwise. The name of his five-year-old store is Extreme Dodge. Not a typical name for a...
Focus on core competencies. Let the dealers be dealers, and let the factories be factories. REMEMBER A FEW YEARS BACK WHEN FRANCHISED dealers seemed like an endangered species? Some seers predicted that Internet car-buying services would turn...
When the black No. 3 Goodwrench Chevrolet Monte Carlo crashed into a concrete wall at the Daytona 500, the dealer community also lost one of its own. Dale Earnhardt, 49, who died in that crash, made the most of his NASCAR earnings by investing in...