Trend Toward Corporate Dealerships

[jdpetey]

What does the future look like to you?
Are you already part of one of these organizations?

Pittsburgh area witnessing Multi-line giants being bought out. Lithia in this case.

From an employee perspective, would there be any upsides?
A larger pool of employees could lower health care aspects I suppose, but how could that be accommodated across state lines?

There are surely positives and negatives, but I have to wonder how long the old school dealership structure will exist.

Is this what we all have to look forward to?

[partsguy99]

I know the General in their plans would PREFER to have corporate owned stores as they feel they are better financed to supply GM
with the profit (i.e. dollars) in order to provide "Value For The Shareholders". I'm afraid the days of family owned stores are numbered.

[MSInventory]

You may be surprised at how many buy/sell inventories I have conducted over the last several years. Most, large corporate buys. It used to be approximately 10% of my work but now has grown to about 30%.

[tmundal]

The one positive for employees in the case of Lithia from people I know that work for them, is a pretty good stock buying program for retirement funds. You generally don't want to be a department manager when they buy you out though. One of the biggest dealers in the pacific northwest (Tonkin dealerships) was just recently bought out which was a pretty big surprise. I'm guessing the 3rd generation of owners didn't want to stay in the business.