Jim Yelverton, general sales manager at Turan-Foley, a General Motors dealership in Gulfport, Miss., said he won’t charge more than sticker price, working instead to line up shoppers with models he’s expecting to receive from the factory.
When transporter trucks pull up, many of the vehicles have already been spoken for, he said: “If there’s eight cars there, as a general rule, maybe six, seven are already sold.”
He said he doesn’t need to jack up the price to boost his bottom line.
“Instead of trying to gouge the customer for over MSRP, which we don’t do, we’re saving so much money on floorplan interest, we’re saving so much money in advertising, because we’re not having to go out and advertise as much as we did,” he said.
Some of the large, publicly traded dealership groups expressed similar sentiment in terms of customer relationships when Automotive News spoke with them last month as they released their first-quarter earnings.
“We do business locally with our customers, and what we don’t want to do is make a short-term decision on pricing that affects a long-term relationship with a customer,” said Daryl Kenningham, Group 1 Automotive Inc.’s president of U.S. and Brazil operations.
The company did not want to charge an “exorbitant amount” because of a “unique supply chain situation,” he said.
“It’s no secret that pricing is going up right now,” he said. “But when you hear any retailer — and not just car dealers, any retailer — that’s charging some exorbitant amount, just because they can, it’s generally bad for long-term business. And that’s our philosophy.”
