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to south of 100 of both, so we’re at a quarter of our running inventory,” Kuzdzal said.
Sullivan noted that the Balise family of dealer- ships includes more than a dozen makes, foreign and domestic, each one having inventory issues that have fluctuated over the past several months, with some doing better now than they were in the spring and others still struggling. He noted that, at the huge Honda store on Riverdale Street in West Springfield, there are normally 250 new cars on the lot. One day a few weeks ago, there were seven.
“It’s a situation we certainly haven’t seen, and each manufacturer will hit that low point at a dif- ferent time,” he explained. “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.”
Cosenzi, who concurred with that assessment, noted that the TommyCar stable was helped ini- tially by the fact that it traditionally keeps large vol- umes of inventory on its lots to offer consumers a wide selection.
“Our dealerships are usually crammed with cars,” she noted. “And that really helped us when this happened; we had a larger supply available to us when the chip shortage hit. Some dealers that only carry a one- or two-month supply ended up in trouble, while we carried a three and a half or four- month supply.”
Shifting Expectations
Given the shortages of microchips and other
parts they’re facing, Sullivan said manufacturers, for the most part, are now only churning out the most popular, and sellable, variations of given models, and customers are adapting to this altered state.
“We’re used to carrying hundreds and hundreds of vehicles at every dealership, and customers are used to looking at 30,000 buildable combinations
“
his or her defenses down. They know it’s a tough time to get cars, and if we have it, they should buy it. If they don’t, we’ll sell it to the next person, so that makes the negotiations much easier.
of a Honda Accord,” he explained. “They’ll say, ‘I want a blue one with a beige interior and this sun- roof; I want this, but I don’t want that.’ The way the manufacturers have adapted through this is they’re only building the most commonly sold and fastest- churning vehicles that they have — they’re only doing certain trim levels.
“You’d think that customers would be mad,” he went on. “But they actually seem relieved. They’re saying, ‘OK, that’s the way they’re going to come in; I’ll take that one.’ Customers have been unbeliev-
ably accommodating, saying, ‘I really wanted a red one, but I guess a black one is OK.’”
Kuzdzal concurred, and noted that, in most ways, it’s easier to sell the few cars that the dealers do have on their lots.
“The consumer is coming in with his or her defenses down,” he explained. “They know it’s a tough time to get cars, and if we have it, they should buy it. If they don’t, we’ll sell it to the next person, so that makes the negotiations much easier.
“It’s never been like this,” he went on. “It’s a very comparable time to when we had the gas issue, when we spiked over $5 a gallon. But it has not slowed business down like it did then; it’s a differ- ent time, and we have to react to what’s coming our way. Inventory is at an all-time low, used cars are at an all-time high as far as value is concerned, and people are taking advantage of that.”
In addition to using that word ‘adjusting,’ all those we spoke with inevitably came back to that other word you hear and read so often these days — normal.
Some spoke of what is obviously a new normal, while others speculated on when and even if things would return to what used to be the norm.
But Sullivan spoke for everyone, and put things in their proper perspective, when he said, “I can’t wait to return to the old normal.”
Just when that will happen is anyone’s guess, but it seems certain that it can’t be a short drive from here. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
The consumer is coming in with
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