With the National Alliance of Buy-Here, Pay-Here Dealers (NABD) hosting its Buy-Here, Pay-Here Subprime Conference with the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association this week in Las Vegas, two GPS providers rolled out enhancements to their suite of tools.

Spireon introduced GoldStar Connect, a full-featured connected car mobile application designed to give BHPH dealers and subprime auto finance companies the opportunity to increase customer loyalty and profitability.

Meanwhile, PassTime announced the launch of its ELITE 6 device, the next generation of its award-winning Elite line of GPS solutions.

PassTime and Spireon each had a presence this week as operators from throughout the country are congregating at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for three days of networking and training.

As the newest addition to the GoldStar GPS solution suite, Spireon highlighted GoldStar Connect can help dealers and finance companies recoup the cost of GPS, while also increasing value, convenience and safety for consumers.

Dealers and finance companies use GoldStar to stay connected to their customers in order to facilitate payment collection, monitor default predictors and streamline recoveries when necessary. With the new GoldStar Connect mobile app, consumers now can have access to all the benefits of connectivity — real-time location access, trip history, vehicle health alerts and recovery solutions for stolen vehicles — as an add-on at the time of purchase.

“In marrying the GoldStar solution with a consumer-facing mobile app, our dealer and lender customers not only improve asset management and protection, but also can offer their consumers a significant value add—modern connected car benefits regardless of the vehicle make, model and year,” said Reggie Ponsford, senior vice president of sales at Spireon.

“We have had a number of larger BHPH dealers piloting the GoldStar Connect solution in the past few months and seeing up to 90 percent consumer sell-through,” Ponsford continued.

With GoldStar Connect, consumers can gain a host of added benefits with their vehicle purchase, including:

— Safety and security: GPS tracking and geofencing capabilities can enable consumers to know the location of the vehicle at all times, helping to ensure the safety of the vehicle and the driver.

— Trip history: Provides visibility to the activity of the vehicle by date, time and duration.

— Smart alerts: Consumers can receive notifications of speeding, geofenced locations and battery condition directly to their mobile devices.

— Stolen vehicle recovery: An in-app recovery guide can provide vehicle location data and instructions to assist in reporting and recovery of a stolen vehicle.

— Insurance discounts: Many carriers provide discounts of up to 15 percent.

“Consumers want connected vehicle features and benefits, and the app helps dealers and lenders build customer loyalty while also driving additional revenue and margin,” Ponsford said. “By bundling the purchase into the vehicle loan, it’s seamless and easy for dealers and buyers.”

GoldStar Connect is available now, according to the company. To learn more, visit www.spireon.com/connect.

“We’re excited to help our customers in the vehicle finance industry evolve their thinking about GPS from solely managing risk to now providing an opportunity to increase consumer loyalty and profitability,” said Brian Deeley, director of product management at Spireon.

“The GoldStar solution is trusted by more BHPH dealers than all of our competitors combined. The addition of GoldStar Connect creates even more distance between Spireon and the rest, maintaining GoldStar as the GPS gold standard for BHPH,” continued Deeley, who will be leading a panel discussion about connecting customers with GPS during Used Car Week 2018, which begins Nov. 12 at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Early bird discounts are available through Oct. 16 by going to www.usedcarweek.biz/register.

Developments at PassTime

As mentioned, PassTime announced the launch of its ELITE 6 device, the next generation of its award-winning Elite line of GPS solutions.

PassTime highlighted Elite 6 offers the most versatile and advanced installation capabilities of any product in its history.  With a unique, installer-configurable starter-interrupt setup option, installers can now easily integrate Elite 6 into a much broader selection of vehicles.

The company noted the highly flexible setup configurations also can allow Elite 6 to more easily address the challenges posed by newer ignition technologies found in push-button start vehicles as well as many advanced stop/start engine systems.

“As automotive technology continues to advance, GPS solutions need to be flexible in the way they can be installed in a vehicle. Over the last several years, the automotive industry has seen vehicle ignition systems evolve far more rapidly than ever before. Quite frankly, any GPS provider that isn’t innovating in this area is falling behind,” said Todd Goodnight, PassTime’s executive vice president of product management.

Elite 6 also features LTE communications for superior network longevity as well as a discrete, precision GPS system for enhanced location pinpointing. 

In addition to the advancements in installation flexibility, PassTime went on to point out Elite 6 also boasts a 20-percent size reduction making installation easier than ever before.

Further, Elite 6 contains advanced self-override features that can give consumers multiple options, including a mobile app, to utilize disable override commands.

The company said Elite 6 will begin shipping to PassTime customers in early November.

For more information, contact PassTime at (877) 727-7846 or info@passtimegps.com.