Page 68 - BusinessWest August 18, 2021

Add it all up, and it’s been a year described, alternately and by different people, as ‘interest- ing,’ ‘challenging,’ and ‘frustrating.’
“It’s an interesting world out there, that’s for sure,” said Ben Sullivan, chief operating officer for Balise Motor Sales, noting that, over the past 18 months, dealers have had all sorts of challenges thrown at them, from the sudden standstill after COVID-19 hit to the current situation where they simply don’t have enough cars to sell.
Carla Cosenzi, president of the TommyCar Auto Group, which includes Northampton Volk-
“My hope is that, by the end
of quarter one next year or the beginning of quarter two, we can get back to what we used to be. But the manufacturers are going to have to go double or triple time to get us there.”
swagen, Country Nissan, Country Huyndai, Volvo Cars Pioneer Valley, and Genesis of Northampton, agreed.
“We went from trying to jump-start the auto industry after COVID happened — we had these great incentives and offers for customers who maybe weren’t in the market to incentivize them to buy a car — to now not even having the inven- tory levels to support that,” she said. “It’s been a wild ride.”
Moving forward, the $64,000 questions con- cern how long this period of extreme adjustment will continue, and what things will look like when it does.
There is no real consensus on the answers, but most believe it will be well into 2022, and per- haps a year or more from now, before the dust fully settles and the lots at area dealerships start to look like they did back in early 2020, when the challenges were much different and there were ... too many cars.
“I think we’re at the bottom of the curve when it comes to availability,” said Sullivan. “From now through the fourth quarter, it will start to improve, but it won’t be back up to what we would call nor- mal historical levels until June of next year.”
Cosenzi agreed. “They’re saying that October is when we’re going to see the inventory slowly start to trickle back in,” she said, noting that ‘they’ means the manufacturers. “We’re not going to get back to the same levels by then, and the expecta- tion is that, by mid-2022, we’ll be back to some- thing approaching normal.”
Mike Kuzdzal, general manager of Metro Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Chicopee, concurred. “The manufacturers are optimistic month over
month that they’ll hopefully be able to ramp up production, but they just can’t keep up with cur- rent demand,” he noted. “As they make these cars and put them in an in-transit mode to us, we’re selling them before they even hit the ground.
“My hope is that, by the end of quarter one next year or the beginning of quarter two, we can get back to what we used to be,” he went on. “But the manufacturers are going to have to go double or triple time to get us there.”
A Different Gear
Carla Cosenzi (with her kids, Nico and Talia) is among many dealers expecting a return to something approaching normal by next spring.
components of this altered state, one in which dealers say business is still solid in many respects, but altogether different.
Inventory is perhaps the biggest issue, and it has changed the landscape in all kinds of ways, the most noticeable being the lonesome lots at area car stores. The dealers aren’t used to it, and neither are local residents.
Indeed, Sullivan noted that more than a few people have asked if Balise has divested itself of the massive Chevrolet dealership on West Colum- bus Avenue. That Chevy store is quite visible from I-91, especially the ramp leading to the South End Bridge, which means people can see — or, in this case, not see — the rows of vans and trucks that have historically populated the south end of the property.
“
manufacturer will hit that low point at a different time. When Honda was out, Toyota had cars; when Toyota was out, Honda had cars. Each month, it kind of moves around, but at this point, heading into the fourth quarter, things will start to get back to what we call a more normal state.”
Kuzdzal told BusinessWest his dealership is one of many in the area that have placed signs on the property saying ‘we buy used cars’ — or words to that effect.
And, by and large, these signs are working, he said, noting that, just before he spoke with us, he bought a car off the street.
Such transactions, once quite rare, have become somewhat commonplace, said Kuz-
dzal and others we spoke with, noting, first, that COVID has yielded conditions whereby many families can do with at least one fewer car in the driveway, and, second, that prices for such vehi- cles have never been higher — and no one knows how long they’ll stay this high.
“Because of the pandemic and people working from home, a second or third car is not required,” Kuzdzal explained. “They’re sharing one car and saying, ‘I’m going sell my car at an all-time high and save that monthly payment, the excise tax, and insurance — and if I do go back to work, I’ll get back in the market.’”
Transactions like one he described are more than wel- come, because traditional sources of used cars — every- thing from new-car trade-ins to rental cars — have dried up in dramatic fashion. So dealers have had to get creative.
It’s a situation we certainly haven’t seen, and each
“We’ve been acquiring a lot
of vehicles from our service cus-
tomers and past customers,”
said Cosenzi, adding that her
dealerships are now also buying
essentially any car that comes
off lease, where before they
would cherry-pick. “We came
up with a really easy five-minute
trade process that has helped us generate quite a bit of used vehicle inventory.”
“Every single car that comes in is sold the day it lands there,” he said, adding that this phenom- enon helps explain the bare pavement and put the inventory problem in perspective.
But not as well as some of the numbers offered by the dealers we spoke with.
“Where we normally run with 350 to 450 new cars and maybe 150 used cars, now we’re down
Auto
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Overall, those signs offering to buy used cars or print, TV, and radio ads stating that ‘no one will pay more for a used car than we will’ are just part of the changed landscape in auto sales.
The dramatically lower volumes of inventory, used cars in the showroom, factory ordering, and essentially selling cars long before they reach the showroom, or even leave the factory, are other
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AUTO SALES
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