If you’re embracing technology as a dealer, you’re likely already swimming in a sea of acronyms. You’ve got your CRM. Your DMS. You’ve got things covered from SEO all the way to F&I. But perhaps a lesser known acronym, VRM, or vehicle relationship management, seems to have a bit more vague definition depending on whom you ask.

But if you ask Roger Penske, Penske Automotive Group’s chairman and chief executive officer, what VRM means to him, he may tell you how it means trying to hold on to a car throughout the retail process, from the first sale all the way to its third, perhaps.

Penske Automotive hosted its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results conference call on Thursday, and one question fielded by Penske resonated with the topic of VRM: How does Penske Auto see the impending used-vehicle volume increase from the expected wave of off-lease vehicles? Is it a certified pre-owned opportunity? What’s the net effect on the company?

Pointing out that used inventory is actually down by roughly 1,000 units overall from where they were a year ago, Penske said he sees it as an opportunity to not only work on customer loyalty, but also keep the cars coming back again and again to bolster gross profits.

“I’ll give you a quick example,” he said. “In Atlanta, where we have two BMW stores that do over 300 used cars a month, probably 10 percent would be coming out of their loaner car fleet every month, another 10 percent would be non-BMW trades, and the rest are BMW.

“I think the ability for us to be able to recondition those, we get the benefit of that in our shops, in the parts and service, and then the ability to utilize some of the OEM’s programs,” Penske said. “That’s one of the things I don’t think people realize … both Mercedes and certainly BMW — and I know Toyota does — they have some very attractive programs on used cars that come out of loaner service or come off lease. Especially if you CPO them. So we’re going to take advantage of those.”

Penske says the company is aiming for a 50 percent to 60 percent loyalty rate from his off-lease customers – whether that means they re-lease that same car, buy it, or choose to lease or buy another vehicle. Keeping that initial vehicle to be sold again and again — that’s Penske’s idea of VRM.

“We want to keep that vehicle, we want to take the vehicle from the customer off-lease, we want to sell or lease it to a second person and then get it back and then retail it at the end,” Penske said. “There’s some real opportunity for gross profit on each vehicle. We don’t want to lose those vehicles as they come through the cycle.”