Very familiar with Purifoy. Great dealership. I'm on there waitlist. Probably 2 years out.. Also on MacMulkin list at about 5 months out.

 

It's been this way for almost 20 months. I decided to trade my wife's 2012 Lexus GX460 in June 2020 for a 2020 Denali. The Lexus was a very low mileage SUV, was garage kept, and was in very good shape. I found the Denali my wife wanted at a dealer about an hour from us and called about trading my wife's Lexus in on it. I got a salesman who had been with that dealer for over 20 years. He asked me to send him about 20 specific pictures of my wife's Lexus and he would call me with the best deal he could give me. When he got the pictures he called me about an hour later and apologized at just how little he could give me for my wife's Lexus, told me he had to sell the Denali for MSRP, apologized for not being able to get my business, and hung up on me! I thought I lost his call since I was on my cell. I called him back and asked him if he wanted to make a sale or not. I told him I would take what he was giving me for my wife's Lexus - I thought it was fair - and we made the deal on the phone.

In August 2020 I had just sold a 2014 Mercedes C350 AMG Cabriolet for stupid money and decided to buy a 2020 Chevy Silverado 2500HD Z71 LTZ. I went to a local dealer who usually has over 200 vehicles - mostly trucks - on his lot. I have a friend from high school who is the truck fleet Sales Manager there so I called him. He told me he had one on his lot that I could test drive. I went to the dealership, drove it, and told him I wanted one but not in that color. He told me if I could find what I wanted within 275 miles he would send someone to go get it if the dealer would let it go. I asked him about a deal and he told me the best he could do was a supplier discount. I found one that afternoon, called him, and it was sitting in my driveway the next night. The Finance Manager had to double check the paperwork because she couldn't believe he gave me a deal.

I post all of this to say the way dealerships are keeping their doors open are used car sales. The dealer who sold me that Silverado made record money in 2020. They get most of their vehicles at auctions and sell them because their lots for new cars are so empty. They make a lot of money on the used cars. That's why I think none of us will see our C8s depreciate over the next several years. With wait lists at the best dealers 10-14 months out and getting longer every day this will only continue. The people paying mark-ups aren't going to stop either because they can afford not to wait on something they want now.

 

We could go on and on with stories of this crazy market. In March of 2021, I sold my pristine 2014 Stingray convertible, 2LT, A/T, with about 34,000 miles. I got $40,000.00 for the car and felt pretty good about it. What I did not know then was that if I had waited just three months (June), due to appreciation, I could have sold the car for $45,000.00 - $50,000.00. To add insult to injury, the guy I sold it to, sold it to a DEALER about a month ago and got 45k. I have never seen a market like this, and I guess we will never see it again...

 

I think the manufacturers and dealers are finding that maintaining lower inventories and making customers order their cars and wait (like we do for the C8) will result in higher sales prices for both going forward. I think the days of them maintaing large inventories of new cars are over.

 

This sort of proves GM doesn't really care about the price gouging. GM could eliminate most of this by allowing only Sold Orders, with the buyers name and address attached.

 

I have been in the auto business for a very long time, people who are patient, flexible, realistic and MOST OF ALL, calm and collected, can usually get close to what they are looking for. Its a crazy biz, but the bottom line is they always want to sell and whether you believe it or not, if you are there, ready willing and able to buy something, they are going to work hard to make that happen.

Congrats on the new jeep! I thought they should have brought that configuration to market years ago and think its should be a strong seller. 5.7L/8 speed(?) is a cool drivetrain! : )

 

Nope...they already knew that. The problem is it doesn't work that way.

Manufacturers make money only when the assembly lines are running. The capacity to build normally far exceeds the capacity to sell. When all the parts are back to normal availability, they will run the assembly lines and incentivize the dealer to stock the car and the customer to buy the vehicle...the same as when normal the last 100 years.

 

It isn't "price gouging" when it is not a necessity. Why would GM care when everyday cars like Subarus and Hyundais are bringing over sticker? From a lot of experience, I can tell you trying to restrict Sold Orders and where they go is totally futile and non-productive for the manufacturer!

 

Up until recently, when we bought cars they dropped $5K in value driving off the lot, dropped about 15-20% year afterwards and by the time it was paid off was worth a fraction of we paid for it.

Now they say my cars I bought 2 years ago are worth more than I paid for them. Maybe these days are not that bad.

 

This is a non starter. It is not possible to GOUGE on a non essential purchase. Its a head scratcher that anyone, let alone a group of "educated" buyers would make such a obviously false claim and do so again and again and again.....

 

With the demand for C8s, GM would have zero difficulty selling every car made as a sold order. There's at least a year's worth of customer deposits at most dealers.

 

Sometimes I feel like an idiot paying a small premium to get a C8, although I did get the color and options I wanted. These posts make me feel a lot better.

 

Do you like the car? Do you smile or giggle every time you press the go button? What is that worth????

As of right now, you may even be in an equity position if you chose to resell. Any other "normal" year, you may have received a huge discount on the car and STILL lost value shortly after acquiring.....

 

You shouldn't feel like an idiot. You got the car that you wanted and didn't wait like some of us (me included) who waited months to get what we wanted.

Research the market for these cars and only look at the cars that sold. You will see what they are selling for vs what people are asking and there isn't a big difference.

 

Dealers are doing just fine right now. While they have almost no new inventory, anything that comes in sells and sells quickly at MSRP or above, so while volume is off, total gross margin is very strong. There was a comment above about how can dealers afford to buy in used cars at these elevated levels? The pre owned market is efficient and many of the dealers had good holding gains on the way up. They only buy cars where they have a reasonable expectation of margin. The WSJ had an article recently about how the dealers also have also cut employees as they move closer to an order only market in this environment.

 

I am buying cars every week. I have a small niche and have ready access to inventory. I am paying more but selling for more. Margins are good and good units move quickly.

 

Evergreen Chevrolet in Issaquah Washington sells all their Corvettes at MSRP plus 10%. I happen to know they have 3 allocations right now for cars people could order because I was talking to one of the owners. You can find cars, you just have to look.

 

It takes a pandemic to pull them in kicking a screaming into the 21st century.

I’ve been ordering cars for years and I see so much waste at a dealership. I already know the car I want so I call the “internet sales” department and they pair me with a salesman who gives me a test drive then tries to talk me into their genericly built dealer stock that has been sitting on the lot for 6 months. When I decline, they try and get me a car at another dealer with some strings attached (might have 300 miles on the odometer for the drive from the other dealer). By the time I finally get to place an order, they hand me me off to a different guy. When the car arrives, they send me to yet a different guy to talk me into warranties and maintenance plans.
It takes at least 4 people to sell me a car that only required 1 person if that.

I know there’s still a breed of buyers that shop for cars by walking blindly into a dealership asking the dealer what car they should get, but they’d save a lot of overhead if they catered more efficiently to the “know what they want” crowd.

 

We'll see if things change when/if we return to some semblance of normal, but you'd be surprised at the number of people who enjoy the process of falling in love with a new vehicle on the dealer lot. I'd venture to guess that a large majority do not know what they want until they meet "the right one."

 

There are around 17,000 new car dealers in the U.S. Each of the those on average represents an investment of around 11 million dollars. There are an abundance of folks financially qualified to buy them but to be approved for one you have to prove to the manufacturer you are capable and knowledgable enough to operate one.

These stores are relatively complex as they generally contain several profit centers engaged in completely different types of businesses but all attached to the general classification of the automobile business. They usually require several millions of dollars in a facility and hundreds of thousands of dollars to open and operate that facility monthly.

Besides the owners of these dealerships and a large number of highly compensated employees, there are a plethora of highly qualified businesses adding support to these dealerships in dozens of areas. That is not to mention the manufacturers own employees highly paid to support these dealer operations. There are literally hundreds of organizations supporting research, legislation, operational statistics, and numerous other areas of concern supported by dealer organizations.

All of these folks usually spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to be better at operating these stores and make higher profits in the future!

Here is what is unbelievable! All any of these folks really need to do is read this Forum. We have a large number of folks here who once bought a car in a dealership and can tell you all the areas where these idiots are wasting their money, how the whole business should be drastically changed, and tell us all how they could be better operated! WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK IT!!