Page 39 - BusinessWest July 10, 2023

AUTO SALES >>
Driving Forces
Auto Dealers Gain Some Momentum, but Challenges Persist
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
[email protected]
rior to the pandemic, Mike Marcotte recalls,
there would be between 300 and 350 new cars on the lot at Marcotte Ford, the Holyoke mainstay started by his grandfather more than a half-century ago.
At the height of COVID, when there were supply- chain issues and a massive microchip shortage, there were maybe 30 or 40 cars on that same lot.
“Employees could park wherever they wanted
at that time,” Marcotte, the company’s president, said with a laugh, noting that today, there are close to 200 cars on the lot on Main Street, partly out of necessity — there are still fewer cars available from the manufacturer — but also out of choice.
“You don’t need to have everything on the lot because you can factory-order vehicles,” he explained.
“It’s nice to have all the options, but you have carrying costs, and you want the freshest product.”
This commitment to keeping smaller inventory levels has provided the business with another opportunity to expand what has become a complex of sorts on Main Street, one that includes everything from the dealership to a commercial truck center to a car wash. Indeed, Marcotte showed BusinessWest a row in the parking lot that is now the site of a construction project — one that will create a bank of charging stations to handle the growing volume of electric-car sales (see related story on page 42).
Rising electric and hybrid car sales and smaller inventories, by choice, are among the trends and ongoing developments in an auto-sales industry that is still in many ways adjusting to life post-COVID. It’s a time of challenge — higher interest rates, talk of recession, and some lingering availability issues when it comes to many makes and models, for example —
“You don’t need to have everything on the lot because
you can factory-order vehicles.”
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Mike Marcotte shows off one of
the Bronco Sport models on the Marcotte lot, one of the small SUVs that are seeing a surge in popularity.