Thanks for the reply MM. What you are sayng is a dealership can borrow which will result in the dealer paying interest on cars unsold or a dealership may purchase their inventory. In the former case the interest payments can amount to a significant cost to the dealer. In the later, purchasing inventory will tie up a significant amount of capital. In a down economy this doesn't seem like a recipe for a small dealership to grow his Corvette allocations without going broke. How can a smaller dealership grow their Corvette allocations without jeopardizing their bottom line? Is the deck stacked against the little guy?

 

Keep in mind that the folks at the museum that perform the PDI do many Corvettes a day. Your smaller dealerships might do 1 or 2 a month. The larger dealers do quite a few also.

 

So, allow me to provide a little insight here after reading all of the comments.

Selling Corvettes is an art and science. Now, to some of you, you may think "why is that? It's just a car like a Malibu, or a BMW, or a Dodge Challenger etc." It actually isn't just a car.

Corvette customers and enthusiasts tend to be finicky and rabid for Corvette knowledge - and I'm not saying that in a negative way - it's just the way they are - and there's nothing wrong with that.

How many times have you gone to make a big-ticket purchase on something and you have a ton of questions about how to operate it or how to care for it - and you ask the salesman, and the salesman just says, "gee...great question - I don't know." How many times have you bought a high-ticket item and the salesman or cashier handed you your purchase, gave you a pat on the back and said "k, thanks, bye!" I bet you walked away from that experience feeling a bit uneasy.

We don't believe in doing that. It's our job to try to know more about the Corvette than the customers that come to us. It's our job to try and be ready to answer any question about any system on that car that a customer could possibly ask us. And if we don't know the answer at that given moment, rest assured you'll be asked kindly to hold on a second while our staff member goes and gets the answer for you. That's how you learn about the car you're buying, and that's how we learn and can improve if and when we're ever asked that question again.

Now, a Corvette is not a purchase made out of need. It's a purchase made out of desire. Not many people desire to have a Chevy Cruze - and not many people buy a Corvette because they need it to bring the kids to soccer practice. So a Corvette purchase is a passionate purchase. As a result - by nature, the customers are going to be more...needy and requiring a bit more hand holding than somebody coming in to buy a Chevy Cruze. We recognize this. A lot of other dealers don't - or don't have the staff or the desire to deal with all of that. And you can't really blame them for that. It's a hell of a lot easier to sell a Chevy Cruze or a Silverado off the showroom floor than it is to have to deal with a million orders with hundreds of different configurations, being delivered via NCM or courtesy deliveries, or setting up shipping for customers across the country....it's A LOT of work.

So why do we do it? As I've said in other posts here - like you all out there - we're Corvette enthusiasts too. As sadistic as it may seem sometimes (LOL) , we enjoy selling them and there is absolutely NO BETTER feeling on earth than when you get a customer that has spent the last 20+ years drooling over owning a Corvette and sacrificed their desire by getting married, having kids, putting the kids through college, etc. And they finally get that chance to buy their dream Corvette and drive away with the biggest smile you've ever seen on their face. THAT is why we do what we do.

Some of us here at MacMulkin are Corvette owners too. We remember that feeling of being able to buy that Corvette we lusted over for so many years. That feeling of finally being able to get it - there's no drug on the face of this earth that feels better than that.

Do you guys remember one of the very first C6 Corvette commercials that came out when the 2005 Corvette debuted? The one with the kid driving a 2005 Corvette wildly through the streets of New York City and hopping off the tops of buildings? If I recall correctly, there was a Rolling Stones song playing in the background. It didn't last long on the air because the "moral police" stepped in crying that it was showing an underage minor driving recklessly etc. Personally, I thought it was a brilliant piece of marketing and one of my favorite Corvette ads! Well...that's the Corvette Team here. While we may be older - we're still that kid at heart that fell in love with a Corvette many years ago and still hold on to those wild dreams of cutting loose from the day-to-day grind, hopping in our Corvettes and enjoying one of the best sports cars ever built. We're just as passionate about the marque as the customers that come to us.

Corvette sales are based on allocation and vice versa. The more Corvettes you sell, the more allocation you stand to gain down the road. The more allocation you get, the more sales you can make and that's how you grow. That's how it is in the automotive industry - not just Corvettes. So, we always want more allocation - even if the market isn't doing well and we have to severely discount the cars, we still want all we can get. When times get better, we'll continue to get good allocation numbers and our sales numbers will reflect that.

I left out A LOT of detail here and I could write a book, but I tried to simplify the explanation as much as possible.

A couple weekends ago, I was laying on the couch on a Saturday night watching TV when I got a text message from one of our Team members to our entire team stating that one of our customers had an issue with his Corvette and was stranded on the side of the road. I asked if he was local because I would go and meet him. Unfortunately, he was on the opposite coast, so I wasn't about to go catch a flight but had he been local, I would have hopped in my car and gone to help him out. That is who we are. THAT is the MacMulkin Corvette Team.

In summary...we have a belief: we don't just sell a car....we sell a dream. And that's the approach we take in everything we do.

 

yes exactly. Shane's crew gives each Corvette probably the best PDI you will receive anywhere. That's what these folks do for a living, giving new Corvette's PDI's and orienting new buyers. After a while they become experts doing this and know a whole lot about these vehicles. That's one big reason I had a NCM delivery for my C7. If I purchase a C8 it too will be a NCM delivery. Those gals and guys rock.