Dealers begging for cars to meet the demand, report says

Striking a balance between demand and stocks is apparently tricky since dealerships of Ford, General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC are now complaining of not getting enough models to boost sales to return to levels before the recession.

A year ago, it had been a totally different story with dealers weeping because they had oversized inventories. For decades, carmakers have produced more cars than customers are asking for but now that they’ve stopped this practice, the dealers are left begging for more.
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pcar4evr - 8/13/2010 6:06:12 AM

+1 Boost

I went to look at a Ford Fiesta as a DD. Salesguy tells me that they can't get enough of them. He claims no discounting of Fiestas - all cars sold at MSRP. Also, there is no leasing program for Fiestas. Could be salesman BS, but his comment was that there is such a huge demand for Fiestas that Ford doesn't need to do anything except make more of them.

Bmw8ter - 8/13/2010 9:24:25 AM

+2 Boost

"Gordon Stewart, the owner of several Chevrolet dealerships....claims that if he only had sufficient supplies then sales of the Equinox would have been triple or quadruple its current levels."

Clearly this guy is not part of the solution to the problem but, ignoring him will be.

Joe_Limon - 8/13/2010 9:37:30 AM

+1 Boost

what problem?

Bmw8ter - 8/13/2010 11:17:28 AM

+2 Boost

Oversaturation and the diminishing resale values that accompany it.

infiniti_G35c - 8/13/2010 1:33:33 PM

+1 Boost

Oversaturation? What, are you kidding me? The point of vehicles like the Fusion, Fiesta, and Equinox are sales. These are volume leaders. We arent talking about exotic vehicles with limited production. Oversaturation means sales, and sales mean profit.

Resale values will not be considerably higher due to the fact that these dealers arent getting enough vehicles. As it is, they are selling in droves. They just want to sell more.

Chrysler and Ford are having problems with lack of production due to all the cutbacks we've seen in the last couple of years. It was hard for both manufacturers to anticipate such an upturn and i think it's logical they rebuild slowly.

The only thing problem i forsee with too much production is a sharp decrease in demand. Instead, production can increase slightly in accordance with given demand.