Even before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expanded the Takata airbag inflator recall earlier this month, several of the large publicly traded dealer groups were encountering the rippling impact observers such as Kelley Blue Book described.

Leaders from AutoNation, Asbury Automotive Group and Sonic Automotive each touched on how they’re handling the challenges of stop-sales preventing prime pieces of their used inventories from being turned as well as agitated customers calling their service departments inquiring when replacement parts would be available to complete repairs.

“Our thought process is this: If there’s a safety issue on a stop-sale car, we’re not going to retail it or wholesale it,” Sonic president and chief executive officer Scott Smith said when the group hosted its first-quarter conference call.

“We’re not going to go to sleep at night with that on our minds,” Smith said before trying to recall reports of a teenage girl who died when her airbag unexpectedly deployed during a minor accident.

“That’s not going to happen with us,” Smith added.

AutoNation chairman, chief executive officer and president Mike Jackson reiterated the policy the company has taken on recalled vehicles. Last September, AutoNation rolled out a strategy not to sell, lease or wholesale any new or used vehicle that has an open safety recall. AutoNation has since modified its position by sending some recalled units to auction.

“We can’t ignore the mother of all recalls here. Takata is a very difficult situation in that you have a safety device that in minor crashes is causing serious injury if not death, and there are tens of millions of vehicles involved,” Jackson said.

“On Takata, we’re in the early innings,” he continued. “We will adapt as best we can to manage this situation. I would say as far as retailing any vehicle with an open recall, that’s out of the question. We have started to auction vehicles with very clear disclosure, with stickers on the car that make it absolutely clear what’s open as far as a recall.

“They have gone to wholesale auctions, and that will help us manage the overhang and is probably the missing piece of the puzzle to make this all work smoothly that we can stand on our brand principle,” he went on to say.

Asbury chief operating officer and executive vice president David Hult estimated that 10 percent of all the used vehicles in the group’s inventory are impacted by recalls. Hult was asked to project how that impacted the group’s sales results.

“I’m not sure how to quantify what we would have sold had we not had it, but it’s fair to say we did miss opportunities because of them,” Hult said.

The Asbury executive acknowledged the assistance the group has received from automakers such as Honda and Acura that have thousands of units involved in stop-sale actions.

“To touch on the inflators that are coming in, we have started to receive them in small quantities from Honda and Acura so far and not from any of the European brands,” Hult shared when Asbury conducted its call in late April. “We’re told later in this quarter we'll start to see more significant volume from both Honda and Acura with those inflators, so we think that'll pick up fairly quickly in the second quarter and it'll be a little bit slower roll for the Europeans.

“Mid- to late summer is our best guess, and they’re going to service the states with the hot and humid weather first,” he continued. “So potentially it could certainly go into fourth quarter or first quarter next year depending upon where the stores are located."

When the Takata recall expansion was announced, Kelley Blue Book analyst Mark Williams told Auto Remarketing about the “bind” dealers are likely to face for several months. Takata is required to make a series of safety defect decisions that will support vehicle manufacturer recall campaigns of an additional estimated 35 million to 40 million inflators, adding to the already 28.8 million inflators previously recalled.

“Dealerships are just going to need to be prepared to have angry customers and be very patient because this isn’t something that’s going to be solved overnight. In fact, it could be months, potentially even years to get all of it resolved,” Williams said.

Evidently dealer groups such as AutoNation are navigating the situation successfully.

“Our decision not to retail vehicles with open recall has resonated very well for the brand with customers,” Jackson said. “Even though it makes life (for dealership personnel) more complicated, truly the company is not putting them in a position of selling vehicles to consumers that have things like an exploding Takata airbag.”