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More of the same and it is not good - Oct 09, 2011
by
Robert Hollenshead
Oct 9 2011 10:28PM
For the second week in a row I sold at less than 100% of MMR average. In my world this doesn’t happen. I sold just under 400 units on the block and 575 total for the week. My share of those sold on the block amount to 14% of the total auction. The fattest of the fat units really did rocket money, but that is a very small percentage of the total units that hit the block. Perfect, no strike sports cars even brought brain death money, but anything that has a half of a strike, not one strike, a half a strike is like pulling wisdom teeth out of a giraffe to get anyone close to winking at mile adjusted MMR.
It’s getting to the point with Lexus product, which I buy and sell more of than Lexus dealer in the world, is becoming a pain on my fat head. They have fallen of the value scale. Short of sporadic simulcast action, nobody cares. I sold about 150 of them this week with another 200 for this week. In my wildest dreams I never thought I would not want to have them in the lane.
I was telling or guys that it reminds me of how things changed for VW after the gas crisis of 1972. I was selling VWs on Broad Street in Philadelphia at the time and it seemed like they would always be hotter than Raquel Welsh. The VW dealers were the most envied in the industry and a few short years later they couldn’t sell their franchises for anything. The car Business is crazy in that regard. What’s hot today is not necessarily hot tomorrow.
If someone asked what’s hot today I would be hard pressed to answer with anything other than one thing; brand new, unusual, low mile, good VHR, good color, no paint, non-smoker, non-rental, non-reshuffled auction units, cheap (under $12,000), trade-in, and with title units which amounts to one out of eighty five. If you have these vehicles or watch them at the sale, you will go home to tell the folks at the dealership just how hot the market is. But if you are watching the overall market and just how picky and fickle buyers are, you would be singing a different tune. Plus your backside would be puckering when you have to put a number on a two or three strike unit that you have to liquidate at the block. It’s ugly with large U.
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