In some cases, Hult said, Total Care Auto’s margins can exceed 30 percent.Steve Starks, CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group of Cos., said Total Care Auto was launched early in the dealership group’s life and became “a tremendous resource for our dealerships” over time.
F&I has grown in importance for Asbury over the past decade.
Asbury averaged $1,775 in net same-store F&I profit per vehicle last year, a 7 percent increase over 2019 and a 77 percent increase over the $1,003 per vehicle retailed in 2010. Overall, F&I represented 4.3 percent of Asbury’s revenue but 24.9 percent of its gross profit in 2020. A decade earlier, the group reported deriving only 3 percent of revenue and 17.9 percent of gross profit from F&I.
Asbury, of Duluth, Ga., ranks No. 6 on Automotive News‘ most recent list of the top 150 U.S. dealership groups based in the U.S., with retail sales of 95,165 new vehicles in 2020. Larry H. Miller Dealerships, of Sandy, Utah, ranks eighth, with retail sales of 61,097 new vehicles last year.
Asbury CFO Michael Welch described bringing Total Care Auto to the Asbury stores as “probably a two- or three-year rollout.” Spreading out the project would minimize the accounting grief — revenue from an F&I product sale is recorded over the life of the contract, not immediately. Also, Asbury will need time to scale the Total Care Auto business itself, he said.
