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News and Industry Features
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J.D. Power says Hyundai Genesis was a moon shot
Since this is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, a rocket analogy is appropriate to illustrate the importance of a new-vehicle launch to automakers, MediaPost notes today. The flubbed launch of a new car is about as easy to correct as a flubbed rocket launch. One can no more relaunch an automotive vehicle than a space vehicle once it has left the pad. In the launch of its own new product, J.D. Power & Company says the company that did it best last year was Hyundai, with its first luxury vehicle, the Genesis. Other winners were Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan. The firm's inaugural Vehicle Launch Index, which quantified how well new and redesigned vehicles do in the first eight month's post-launch (whether they make orbit or, metaphorically, splash and sink into the Atlantic) looks at things like vehicle revenue, dealer gross profit, incentives, residual value and the credit quality of buyers to rank automakers. (See the full results inside.)
[FULL STORY]
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LaNeve to stay at GM, lead sales operations
Mark LaNeve says he's staying on with General Motors to lead its sales operations, the Detroit Free Press reports. His future with the company -- which is undergoing a management turnover following its emergence from bankruptcy July 10 -- was thrown into question this month when CEO Fritz Henderson seemed to indicate uncertainty when asked about LaNeve's role. LaNeve has been GM North America vice president of vehicle sales, service and marketing since March 2005. In an e-mail to staff late Friday, LaNeve assured that he'd be sticking around.
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Detroit loses its edge in rental car market
If you're renting a car this summer, chances are good that it won't be American. For the first time, U.S. auto rental companies are buying more foreign vehicles than domestic brands, the Los Angeles Times reports. Through the first six months this year, only 48.8% of the new vehicles going into rental fleets came from General Motors, Ford or Chrysler, compared with two-thirds a year earlier, according to data supplied by trade publication Automotive Fleet. Just three years ago, more than 8 in 10 vehicles sold to rental fleets such as Hertz, Enterprise and Avis came from the Big Three. Now those lots are filling with models from Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and Nissan. The dramatic turnabout is a reminder of how much ground domestic automakers have ceded to foreign competitors as the auto industry evolves. It also illustrates how rental companies, under new financial pressures, are getting choosier about what they put on their lots as they cut the overall number of vehicles they carry.
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Repair job: GM urges, 'tell Fritz'
General Motors Co. Chief Executive Frederick "Fritz" Henderson is launching a public-relations salvo this week, activating an online suggestion box called Tell Fritz, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required). The initiative, part of a wider assault the auto maker is waging to repair its tattered image, is designed to enable the 50-year-old executive to further distance himself from what has become known as the Old GM, or the auto maker that existed before Mr. Henderson steered the company through bankruptcy court in about 40 days. Henderson created the effort in the week leading to the auto maker's July 10 emergence from bankruptcy protection.
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Chrysler to match 'cash for clunkers' incentive
Chrysler says it will match the $4,500 government incentive for people to trade in their old gas guzzlers for new vehicles under the "cash for clunkers" program, The Associated Press reports. The automaker announced Wednesday that it will offer up to $4,500 cash or zero percent financing for six years on most of its 2009 Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep models. The incentive begins Thursday and lasts until Aug. 31. Chrysler Group LLC says in a statement that buyers are eligible even if they don't qualify for the clunkers program. The government's "cash for clunkers" program is expected to begin later this month. It gives owners of inefficient, older vehicles up to a $4,500 incentive to trade them in and send them to the scrap heap in exchange for more efficient models.
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Middle Tennessee auto sales get bump from gas guzzlers
With General Motors and Chrysler out of bankruptcy, consumer confidence in the two U.S. automakers may be on the rise, and Middle Tennessee dealers say new-vehicle sales are showing signs of recovery in a year when sales are down more than 35 percent nationwide, The Tennessean reports. At the Freeland Chevrolet Superstore in Antioch, "Our sales are up, and July will be the best month we've had since we've been here," Chief Executive Ben Freeland said. "But traffic is still spiky with some good days, and some bad," he said. Freeland took over the former Bill Heard Chevrolet franchise in November from AutoFair Chevrolet. "Our business mostly seems to be back to normal, and the bankruptcy doesn't seem to have affected customers much," said Don Duke, executive director of Bob Frensley Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge in Madison, one of the Middle Tennessee dealerships that survived Chrysler's massive cuts in its dealership ranks that took effect early last month.
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Car dealer pampers customers
The auto industry may be flailing, but one South Florida dealer is making a bold move by opening a multimillion-dollar dealership complete with a gym, cafe and salon, JustNews.com reports. Whether you need a caffeine fix or have a workout routine, one new North Miami business offers both, along with a few other services. "We have a salon where you can get your hair done. We have a Zen room where you can relax and you can also get your teeth whitened," said business owner Craig Zinn as he took Local 10's Jonathan Vigliotti on a tour of his new facility. While Zinn could easily be describing a spa or hotel, he actually sells luxury cars at Lexus of North Miami. "I always have to remind everyone they're in a car dealership," Zinn joked.
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izmocars releases iEquity for auto dealers
izmocars, an Internet business solutions provider for the automotive industry, today announced the Release of iEquity ), a wizard based campaign marketing tool that the company says enables auto dealers to identify and target customers that have positive equity in their vehicles.
[FULL STORY]
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Insignia, CIMA Systems in marketing partnership
Insignia Group, the leading provider of accessories sales and management innovations, announced today a new marketing partnership with CIMA Systems which will provide favorable pricing of CIMA products and services to Insignia affiliate dealerships. CIMA Systems is a provider of multi-channel marketing communications technologies to the automobile industry. Under this new partnership, Insignia will offer their dealership customers the opportunity to proactively promote their parts and accessories through CIMA’s advanced patent-pending marketing communication tools, which is integrated with the Insignia Accessories Sales System.
[FULL STORY]
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Autodesk helps bring automotive design data from CAD to ad
Autodesk, Inc. announced that the BMW Group has contracted Autodesk Consulting to automate the transformation of design data into marketing assets and create photorealistic, animated models of BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brand cars. Autodesk, in cooperation with Mackevision, will convert vehicle data into Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Showcase software files that are ready for animation and rendering. These photo-real virtual models will be used to create marketing materials before the vehicles are actually produced -- including TV commercials, brochures and the company's web profile.
[FULL STORY]
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In Dealer magazine
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Quit your complaining...
by Jack Bennett
Well,  a lot has happened since... yesterday! That’s right, the world is changing so fast that yesterday was way different than today. I read a great article yesterday and another one the day before that and well, you get my drift. In this world you cannot turn around without reading something in the newspaper, on the Internet, in this magazine, or even on your phone that someone with a beef has written about. The article I read was on the closing of dealerships. It was written by a very well-read, intelligent dealer who was writing about why the dealer network was not the problem. He was 100 percent right on every front. Here’s the problem. So what? The factories are going to do what they are going to do. The real problem I have is that we all spend so much time writing, reading and blogging that we don’t have time, or are losing time that we could be using more productively. Ah, it is slow in coming and will be for a while but the economy is starting to make a rebound. And now the price of gas has jumped $1 a gallon! Just when we see a little light at the end of our individual economic tunnels, the oil companies whack us over the head! “Yeah, but it’s cheaper than last summer.” So what! The point is you can’t have recovery if every time there is an uptick, you whack it over the head. Four and a half dollar gas per gallon is what got us into this problem. That’s my belief. It killed the truck market and that killed the car business, but that is another story. Read more
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ARCHIVE
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Issue 49
July 15, 2009
Vol. 1
Issue 49
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Issue 48
July 8, 2009
Vol. 1
Issue 48
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Issue 47
July 1, 2009
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Issue 47
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Issue 46
June 24, 2009
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Issue 46
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Issue 45
June 17, 2009
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Issue 44
June 10, 2009
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Issue 43
June 3, 2009
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Issue 42
May 27, 2009
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Issue 41
May 20, 2009
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Issue 40
May 13, 2009
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Issue 39
May 6, 2009
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Issue 38
April 29, 2009
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Issue 37
April 22, 2009
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Issue 36
April 15, 2009
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Issue 36
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Issue 35
April 8, 2009
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Issue 35
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Issue 34
April 1, 2009
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Issue 34
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Issue 33
March 25, 2009
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Issue 33
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Issue 32
March 18, 2009
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Issue 32
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Issue 31
March 11, 2009
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Issue 31
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Issue 30
March 4, 2009
Vol. 1
Issue 30
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