EchoPark Automotive — whose parent company’s president said “is not your mom-n-pop used-car store” — is showing some positive signs on the sales front in its few first months and has plans to roll out in a second market next year following its debut in the Denver area in November.

During Sonic Automotive’s recent quarterly conference call, company president and chief strategic officer Scott Smith provided an overview of the progress made by the retailer’s standalone pre-owned store program.

“Roughly eight years ago, when we began thinking about EchoPark, we wanted to build something that was totally unique in the industry and that could eventually dove-tail with our new-car franchised dealerships,” Smith said. “I cannot overemphasize enough that this is not your mom-n-pop used-car store.

“We have invested in and built what will become a substantial national brand that is predictable, repeatable and sustainable,” he continued. “We did extensive market research to learn exactly what the pain points are in the automotive purchase experience and we set out to eliminate them — all of them.”

Smith went on to note that EchoPark employs a “customer-centric model” that puts the customer in control as opposed to the dealer. The company’s EchoPark team, he said, is also compensated much differently than a salesperson at a traditional store.

Following the EchoPark hub location in Thornton, Colo., launching Nov. 3, Sonic rolled out two neighborhood locations in the Denver area in January and plans to debut at least two more in that area this year.

“We are currently searching for real estate to begin planning for opening a second market for EchoPark in 2016,” Smith said. “We have experienced delays in opening our other locations, which is predominantly due to weather.

“Preliminary sales results are exceeding our internal projections, and we have not yet begun our media placement that will begin later this quarter and into next quarter,” he added.

Specifically, the presentation slides accompanying the company’s earnings results indicates that the EchoPark hub location, for instance, was at 150 unit volume in January, following unit volume of 126 in December and 82 in November.

Among other positive observations about EchoPark cited in the company’s presentation were positive experience, high reconditioning levels, F&I performances beating projections (even without an F&I office) and a strong appraisal process, just to name a few.

The company did note a few opportunities to improve EchoPark, including its website performance, SEO/SEM performance, weather delaying openings of two locations and a delayed (until Sunday) completion of its pricing system.