National Auto Care Corp., an administrator of vehicle service contract and ancillary programs including CarMark Certified, announced the appointment of new vice president of actuarial and product.
Tapped to lead the pricing activities for NAC including new product development and the enhancement of existing products is Tim Burgess, who is an associate of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Burgess comes to NAC with more than 14 years of actuarial experience, most recently from Allstate Dealer Services where he was responsible for product pricing, including the development of financial models, rate filing exhibits and managing various product implementation projects. Burgess will report to Tony Wanderon, chief executive officer of NAC.
“Tim is another great addition to our growing team,” Wanderon said. “His fresh perspective on product and pricing as well as his experience in assisting dealer owned captives in maximizing their underwriting income is invaluable in today’s rapidly changing environment.”
SoCal Penske broadened its presence in the southern California retail sales and service market last week by adding a Toyota store to its dealer group.
With plans for a complete renovation to operate a state-of-the-art facility, SoCal Penske now has Penske Toyota Scion of West Covina in its store portfolio.
Located just off Interstate 10 at Azusa, Penske Toyota Scion of West Covina expands SoCal Penske’s footprint to a total of 11 dealerships in the southern California market.
SoCal Penske president Roger Penske Jr. said, “We are excited to add Penske Toyota Scion of West Covina to our dealer group family and make additional investments in the local community.
“The acquisition of Penske Toyota Scion of West Covina expands our presence in the West Covina Auto Plaza, complementing Audi, Mercedes-Benz, smart and Sprinter, and allows us to offer more vehicle options to a key market in southern California,” he continued.
Dealerships from all over New Jersey have raised over $500,000 for The Valerie Fund. Currently 177 different dealerships have come together to collect donations for the fund, whose mission is to raise money to support the comprehensive healthcare of children with cancer and blood disorders.
The campaign, titled New Jersey Auto Retailers Unite, began June 1 and will run through September 30, with a celebratory event on September 14 to reveal its “My First Car” coffee table book, featuring first car stories from various New Jersey athletes, celebrities and public figures.
Those that test drive a vehicle between now and August 30 at a participating dealership will receive a voucher for a car giveaway sweepstakes, with nearly 2,000 registrants already tallied for the event. Three additional vouchers are given to those that purchase a vehicle.
James Appleton, the president of the New Jersey Coalition of Auto Retailers, applauds his organizations charitable donations to its community.
“Auto retailers contribute millions of dollars to hundreds of charities every year in virtually every community throughout New Jersey,” Appleton said. “The New Jersey auto retail community has come together like never before to support the thousands of children with cancer and blood disorders and the tremendous care they receive from The Valerie Fund.”
For more information about the New Jersey Auto Retails Unite campaign, The Valerie Fund, and the New Jersey Coalition of Auto Retailers, visit their site here.
Group 1 Automotive has announced the acquisition of a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Boerne, Texas, which will operate as Mercedez-Benz of Boerne. The dealership, which also includes a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter commercial vehicle franchise, is expected to generate an estimated revenue of $135 million annually.
“We are delighted to strengthen our relationship with Mercedes-Benz and further expand our scale in the San Antonio metropolitan market,“ said Earl Hesterberg, Group 1’s president and chief executive officer.
Further west, Larry H. Miller Dealerships announced the acquisition of Quality Toyota in Corona, Calif. The dealership, which will be the group’s first in the state of California, will maintain all of its current employees, according to Dean Fitzpatrick, the group’s president.
“Employees are vital to the success of a dealership and we consider the team at Quality Toyota part of the asset,” Fitzpatrick said. “We always work to ensure that current employees transition with the store, and we have training programs in place to encourage their success.”
The dealership has been renamed Larry H. Miller Toyota Corona.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau announced its Hot Wheels report this week, the bureau’s annual release of the ten most stolen vehicles in the United States.
The list features a perfect split between import and domestic automakers, with Honda’s Accord and Civic topping the list. Full-size pickups made up a considerable chunk of the list, taking the Nos. 3, 4 and 6 spots. Two other Japanese automakers also made the list with two from Toyota and one from Nissan. The following lists include figures with total thefts based on data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center.
NICB’s 2013 Hot Wheels Top-Ten Most Stolen in the U.S.
- Honda Accord (53,995)
- Honda Civic (45,001)
- Chevrolet Pickup, Full Size (27,809)
- Ford Pickup, Full Size (26,494)
- Toyota Camry (14,420)
- Dodge Pickup, Full Size (11,347)
- Dodge Caravan (10,911)
- Jeep Cherokee/Grand Cherokee (9,272)
- Toyota Corolla (9,010)
- Nissan Altima (8,892)
The report also included the top 10 model-year 2013 vehicles stolen in the same year.
NICB’s 2013 Hot Wheels Top-Ten Most Stolen MY 2013s in 2013 in the U.S.
- Nissan Altima (810)
- Ford Fusion (793)
- Ford Pickup, Full Size (775)
- Toyota Corolla (669)
- Chevrolet Impala (654)
- Hyundai Elantra (541)
- Dodge Charger (536)
- Chevrolet Malibu (529)
- Chevrolet Cruze (499)
- Ford Focus (483)
To read the full report, click here.
Flick Fusion announced this week its video marketing platform for dealers, offering what it contends is the first of such platforms to automate the video production process, including inventory videos, video emails and other various dealer-related videos.
Brian Cox, the president and chief executive officer of Flick Fusion, says his company offers to dealers the digital platform for their inventory that they need to maximize sales.
“Many dealers want to incorporate video into their marketing plan, but don’t have the resources or expertise to create dynamic videos for all their marketing needs,” Cox said. “Our platform offers a simple, cost-effective method for creating a video marketing strategy proven to attract more web site visitors and convert them into leads.”
Flick Fusion utilizes the power of Google by avoiding Flash and publishing videos in “SEO-friendly” formats and uploads them to YouTube, increasing exposure to a wider market.
“Flash videos can’t be indexed by Google and therefore they don’t boost SEO rankings,” Cox said. “Additionally, many third-party sites don’t accept Flash so dealers can’t benefit from video syndication, which also boosts rankings.”
In addition to the video format, the program also utilizes VidMail, which allows dealer employees to customize videos for individual lead inquiries, which can be custom-made on request with video greetings, vehicle walkarounds and other related dealership videos.
For more information about Flick Fusion, visit their site here.
Pick an automaker, domestic or import, and they’ve probably recalled thousands of vehicles so far in 2014. In light of this year setting a new record for recalled vehicles, Potratz Partners Advertising shared two separate recommendations aimed at helping dealerships use recalls to improve both the service and sales departments.
“Despite the negative aspect of a vehicle recall, it does present dealerships with a great opportunity to be able to drive not only service traffic, but sales traffic as well,” said Samantha Cunningham, vice president of account services at Potratz during a recent installment in the company’s “Hard Facts” video series.
To improve the service drive, Cunningham suggested that dealers enhance the content and capabilities of their websites.
“We need someone to submit a lead form, not just schedule an appointment,” Cunningham said. “Why not build a page specifically for vehicle recalls?”
Turning next to the sales area, Cunningham explained the strategy by first considering scenarios not associated with the auto industry.
“Think about it this way. Have you ever experienced frustration because something is broken and you feel like you consistently have to repair it? Maybe your phone or your dishwasher,” Cunningham said. “Think about the frustrations a customer might be experiencing if they’re getting something regularly about a recall that’s pertaining to the vehicle they’re currently driving.
“It’s a great opportunity leverage the situation and maybe make a conquest from another manufacturer,” she added.
To watch the entire video titled, “Make Your Recalls Work for You,” click the window at the top of this page.
Last week’s second quarter conference call with Penske Automotive Group resonated several commonalities with other public dealer groups in the country, primarily the continued search for qualified automotive technicians.
The group’s chairman and chief executive officer, Roger Penske, noted that although his company is not as affected by recent recalls, with only 4 percent of their total sales coming from the domestic manufacturers, Penske is still on the hunt for technicians.
“I would say the right technicians are in tight supply,” Penske said. “We’ve added 200 technicians in our network over the first six months.
“At the moment, I’d say we probably need a couple hundred technicians. We’ll go through that on a very selective basis for the balance of the year.”
While AutoNation continues its massive search and Asbury Automotive Group continues to develop its own in-house development program, Penske leans on its partnership with one of the biggest automotive training schools in the nation.
“One thing we’ve done for a number of years, we’ve had a very strong relationship with UTI, Universal Technical Institute,” Penske said. “They generate about 18,000 technicians a year that they graduate.”
With locations near major cities all over the country, Penske enjoys the accessibility of UTI’s graduates.
“What we do is, we go in and we interview the best technicians and, in many cases, some OEMs have special programs where they particularly train in a step course where they go one level up and they train specifically on an OEM,” Penske said. “So what we’ve done, not only in the truck leasing business, that’s where we have diesel and we need them, we’ve used them as a resource and we’ve got some really good candidates, and I would say that would be our biggest area where we’re gaining candidates.
“And, to me, people coming out of UTI seem to be really good guys to start. Technicians are hard to get; a lot of our guys retire that have all of the expertise so it’s important to grow the space.”
When asked about the advances in technology and the viability of smaller, “mom-and-pop” repair shops, Penske hinted that the future will likely lean in favor of the dealers, who have a far-higher capacity to handle the tech-heavy computer systems of modern vehicles.
“I think we’re going to go through a sea-change here; the technology is growing leaps and bounds over the last four or five years, and as these cars get into the market and are resold, I think they’ll be a real opportunity and increase our customer pay as we go forward,” Penske said. “Also, the availability to have the codes and to have the expertise. We send our technicians to these OEM schools regularly in order to keep them at pace of the technology so I think it bodes well for the retail auto business and the OEM franchise dealers as we go forward.”
As the digital age continues to develop, dealers have had to adapt at an ever-quickening pace to satisfy a perpetually evolving consumer base. For used-car customers, Penske Automotive Group announced during their second quarter conference call on Wednesday that one of their main conduits for sales is via their website.
Roger Penske, the group’s chairman and chief executive officer, believes mastering the digital side of the business is key to limiting competition.
“We have looked at our PenskeCars.com, and we have over 60,000 used cars online there, which seems to be generating quite a bit of traffic,” Penske said. “I think that’s working out from an e-commerce perspective.
“On the used car side, we were up $50,” Penske continued, in regards to profit per car. “When you look at it sequentially, there’s no question that we’ve been able to sustain our margins for the last three or four quarters, which I think is key. We don’t have the inter-brand competition on the new and I think with the used, with the execution of the Internet, if a person wants to buy a particular car, and if the process is efficient and we can get that customer in, we don’t have a competitor on that car.”
To contrast, Mike Jackson, the chairman and CEO of AutoNation, while speaking in his own company’s second quarter conference call last week, addressed a long-term but slightly different goal for the group’s online strategy. Though not referring directly to new or used sales, Jackson wants to get to the point where customers who shop for cars online can get all of the financial logistics squared away before ever setting foot into the dealership.
“Informational sites are useful. They’ve taken us to a certain point, but the customers are not interested in doing all of that work, disconnecting, and then coming to the stores and starting all over again,” Jackson said. “The sites need to reach into the store and transact on real inventory, real incoming inventory, with real pricing, with market data that validates that pricing. And the customer, when they see the car they want, at that price they want, are able to send us a deposit and make it their car."
Jackson noted that the company is investing $100 million, over the course of 2014 and 2015, into this effort, aiming at making the AutoNation website transactional by the end of 2014.
“I think we will have to see how skillful we execute and how the marketplace reaction is, but this was the reason behind why we rebranded the company coast-to-coast. We could not envision doing this with multiple names, we think it’s far more powerful with one name,” Jackson said. “It’s sort of like the Shared Service Center, which took us seven years to fully implement, that gave us both a cost advantage and a performance advantage and, also, in many ways, was a foundational element for this digital undertaking and that we need all the stores on the same technology platform for everything from database management to how we run the company day-to-day.
“It’s certainly not the end of the story over the next two years; there will be many more chapters,” Jackson continued. “But we’re in a very ambitious and exciting phase. I call it an investment phase, that we feel, in our ambitions to build a great company, and a great brand, in the long term, we need to make and hit the right vision for the company and win in the marketplace.”
In addition to announcing record profits on Wednesday, Penske Automotive Group said it increased its worldwide used-car sales by more than 10 percent in the second quarter, with its year-to-date sum now ahead by more than 12 percent over year-ago figures.
Penske sold 45,912 used retail units worldwide in Q2, a 10.4-percent increase in global used sales. Same-store used retail sales were up 6.2 percent at 44,121 units.
Through the first half of the year, Penske has sold 91,282 used retail units (up 12.6 percent) and its same-store tally came in at 87,744 (up 9.1 percent).
Gross profit per used vehicle retailed in Q2 was at $1,966, a 2.6-percent increase. Through six months, gross profits per used vehicle retailed is at $1,942, a 0.3-percent hike.
“Our business delivered another outstanding quarter, achieving over 20 percent growth in revenues, income from continuing operations and related earnings per share,” said company chairman Roger Penske. “I am particularly pleased with another quarter of double-digit, same-store retail revenue growth, further highlighting the benefit of our company’s brand mix and geographic diversification. We remain confident in the strength of the auto retail market and our ability to continue growing the overall business.”
