Market Conditions Commentary (Archive 2013-April)
With nearly 40 years in the wholesale automobile business, our founder Robert Hollenshead offers his insights on the market and where it is going -- info to help your business succeed!
by Robert Hollenshead
4/4/2013 1:22:11 PM

I am not going to rag you today about what we have for Friday, but if you are a car buyer and you aren’t paying attention to this group you should be castrated.  Never before and possibly never again will you witness such an offering.  This ain’t  braggadocios  bluster, it’s a warning about a car buyers dream come true.

I picture you guys looking at snot on the static sites all week and watch little sale where thaere may be 20 or 40 cars of interest, I get it (not really).  But here no matter what you buy, there is groupings that if you added up what you saw all week it ain’t close to what you will witness here.  So here we go, lane 24 at 8:45, lane 23 at 12:30 (*!@#@!$#@%^&????), and lane 6 at 12:30($#@!#%^&**&^%$#@!).

If you are doing it on simulcast break out a lawn chair and get

More...

by Robert Hollenshead
4/3/2013 3:20:00 PM

Cops are coming.

Don’t worry, not for me, but for traffic control.  This place is an absolute nut house.

 People, cars, screaming, accidents, wrong VIN, Post-sale prevention insanity from months ago that pop up now (and I am dumb enough to handle the problems months after the auction told you to pound sand), trucker is lost, title lost after being turned in at the sale (thank God for Headstart as we have everything scanned, it’s like a miracle), parts stolen off the cars sitting on the sales lot (usually parts that are on national back order naturally), and this week they are stealing spoilers off old body style GX Lexus because they are $790 for the part alone, nuts I tell you. 

This in conjunction with another comically tragic thing that we are dealing with recently,

More...

by Robert Hollenshead
4/2/2013 3:01:16 PM

Once again the market is almost exactly the opposite of what you read from the pundits and what common sense would dictate. No surprise as they report the market that they don’t participate in. It’s kind of like the intelligence we got from our specialists before we destroyed Iraq…all false, no relationship to the facts. 

If you were to believe what you read, you might believe actions are selling high percentages, 85-95% at well over market value. Not close, and not close. So as I breeze through the most recent blurbs, and think about how we experience the market, I find it almost surrealistic. It’s close to a one to one opposite of what they write and how it should be. If you didn’t take the profession seriously you could say it is funny. But since we are dead serious about what we do, I would say it’s sad and very misleading, confusing.

More...