Used Car News

COLORADO
Jim Timerman, owner, Universe Auto LLC, Colorado Springs, Colo.:
“I have been in business for 12 years. We keep a newer inventory, within six years of brand new. We keep about 50 vehicles on the lot. This was the same as last year. I keep the same amount of cars even though business is horrible.
“I think the independent car dealers have had a really tough time this year, very much so. I think it is coming from the fact that the federal government did not take into consideration everything. From Cash for Clunkers to the bailout money for the banks. I think the fact that people do not have money is keeping them from coming in and buying.
“I have mostly trucks and SUV’s. The SUV and truck market is probably 85 percent of my business. For financing, I use banks, credit unions, special finance, all of the above.
“I buy the cars myself. I mostly buy in southern California and Arizona. There is a limited amount of cars so the cars are worth more money. So the dealers have to pay more money. The value of the same car as last year is going to cost more today.
“I keep mostly imports, probably 85 percent are imports and 15 percent domestic.
“I advertise everywhere – Autotrader.com,  Craigslist, about all the Web sites. We get some business through our own Web site. Not as much as we would like, but some.
“The average selling price of our cars is about $10,000.
“The last car I sold was a 2004 Nissan Frontier. It had about 70,000 miles on it and sold for about $14,000.”
MISSISSIPPI
Brett Denley, general manager, Southern Auto Credit, Grenada, Miss.:
“Southern Auto Credit has been here for at least six years. I have been here for just a couple of months.
“Sales have been pretty slow. We keep $7,000-and-lower priced cars. But we keep a few nicer pieces.
“We keep Grand Prixes, Impalas, Grand Ams, Buick LaSabres. We don’t keep any trucks. We just keep cars, from compact to full size. Right now we have about 35 cars on the lot. This is lower than last year. This is my second month here and I came from a new-car store and I am not used to the secondary finance just yet.
“I think what’s mostly keeping consumers from buying down here in Mississippi is that they don’t have enough for the down payment. The average selling price for our cars is $7,500.
“I get probably 10 people a week approved, and everybody wants to pay $500 down. It is going to take generally from $1,200 to $1,500 to put somebody in a car.
“The two owners and I split the buying of vehicles. We get some of them from Internet auctions and some from other auctions and another portion are trade-ins from local dealerships.
“We have mostly domestic cars. It’s probably 90 percent domestic and 10 percent foreign.
“We advertise in local magazines, local radio and local television. We have a Web site, but we don’t do any sales from the Web site.
“The prices at the auctions are going up. Black Book is supposed to be the true guide, but the auction is way off. That’s been hurting because a lot of our lenders are basing their values off of Black Book. But vehicles are bringing 5 to 15 percent over what the Black Book values are.
“The last car I sold was a 2005 Pontiac Grand Am, sold it for $5,785 with 116,000 miles.”
NEVADA
David Balsom, president, Nevada Auto Exchange, Las Vegas:
“I have been in business for over 30 years. I keep late model cars on my lot. I usually keep about 30-35 cars. The number is the same as this time last year, but the number of cars is down from two years ago.
“Sales are down this year. This year they are down because of the bank situation. Last year they were down because of the elections and the gas prices. This year the banks need to lighten up on the money and unemployment is also a factor.
“Sales were down about 50 percent last year compared to two years ago. This year they are up about 10 percent from last year.  Unemployment and the banks are keeping the consumers from buying. The banks are being tight-fisted.
“I keep a little bit of everything. There probably is a 50-50 mix of cars and trucks.
“For financing, I use only credit unions. And some floor planning for wholesale.
“I get the cars at auctions and new dealer trade-ins. I buy the vehicles myself.
“I probably have an even mix of domestic and imports. Probably 50-50.
“I do some advertising, mostly on the Internet, but I don’t have my own Web site.
“The average selling price for my cars is probably $12,000.
“Prices seem to be coming down at the auctions.
“I think that  a nice clean front line car always seems to bring good money. Cars that need any kind of work or announcement bring no business at all.
“I would say that dealers need to find a good auction that works for them.
“I find that the public is being pickier than they have ever been. They want nicer cars and would rather pay more money to get one.
“Financing is the key to making a sale right now.
“I think that auctions need to work more with the independent dealers. They need to be more sales friendly, because I think that the independent dealers are the major purchasers of the cars at the auctions.
“I think that the auctions need to go back to what their roots were.
“The last car that I sold was a 2008 Toyota Highlander (two-wheel-drive) we sold for $17,400. It had 23,000 miles.”

CALIFORNIA
Justin Soghomonian, vice president, All Valley Dealer Auto Auction, North Hollywood, Calif.:
“As of six months ago, we added a Tuesday auction to our already existing Friday auction . Sales are going good. This time last year we were not doing so well.
“We have two lanes and on Tuesday we run 150 to 200 units and Fridays we run 350 to 400 units. This time last year we only had the Friday auction. We ran about 280 to 300 units.
“It is not like sales are amazing this year, but they are definitely better than last year.
“We have over 200 dealers coming into the sales. They are mostly from the Los Angeles area. A couple of them come from Oregon, Arizona and Nevada. The number of dealers has grown from last year.
“We get a mix of dealers coming in, some are struggling and some are doing really good. Most of our cars are from fleet lease, some are repossessions and dealer consignments. They are doing well. Our sales are about 60 percent. I would have to look up the average price of our vehicles, but probably around $10,000. Cars are doing better this year, price wise, than last year. SUVs are definitely doing better.
“Some of the higher end models are harder to sell.
“We only run two lanes so when we ran a really big sale on Fridays, it was tough to have everyone stay for such a long period of time, usually over three and a half hours. So the Tuesday sale brought in more crowds. And in my opinion the cars ranging from $2,000 to $8,000 do so much better on Tuesdays.”
OHIO
Amos Watson, general manager, Complete Auto Auction, Marysville, Ohio:
“Sales are going fine, it’s hard to find cars right now. I definitely attribute that to the Cash for Clunkers program. It took a lot of used cars off the market.
“We have two lanes and we run anywhere from 50 to 250 vehicles. It is probably 25 percent less than this time last year. Again, this is because we cannot find cars.
“As far as Black Book value, our sales are at about 101 percent of the Black Book value of the car. We sell about 98 percent of the vehicles we show. The sales are about the same as last year. I might even say that sales are a little bit better than last year.
“We have somewhere between 20 to 30 dealers coming to our auctions. The number of dealers is the same as last year. Mostly the dealers are coming from the central Ohio area or the tri-state area – Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky.
“We deal primary with Honda repossessions and Honda lease returns. Right now about 70 percent of what we are doing is repossessions. The sales for lease returns are about the same at 98 percent. Right now the dealers are scraping to find cars. It is very competitive out there.
“The average sales price for our units is about $15,000.
“This is up from last year. Last year we were selling vehicles for around the $12,500 mark.
“As far as a certain unit doing better according to Black Book values, any Honda brand we were getting over 100 percent. This is for Hondas such as Accords and Pilots.
“January, when the next big schedule of lease returns arrive, it is my understanding that there will be a downpour of Honda Accords.”
SOUTH CAROLINA
Tommy R. Rogers, general manager, Carolina Auto Auction Inc., Williamston, SC:
“We do three large promotional sales a year, and Oct. 22 was the third one we typically do. We call it our Oktoberfest Celebration. We join it with our big golf tournament we do every year.
“We had fantastic sales Oct. 22. We are seeing increases in sales percentages of up to 12 percent a week.
“When it comes down to it, I think these guys need inventory.
“Even though we have fewer cars to offer we are selling a higher percentage of them, mainly because of the depleted inventory dealers have on their lot.
“We have eight lanes. We average 1,250 vehicles a week. Oct. 22, we were right at 1,700.
“This time last year we were actually down on consigned units, but up on sold units.
“I would rather not say what my sales percentages are, but they are strong.
“We typically have 730 dealers here per week. We get dealers from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.. But, basically, we’ll get dealers from all over.
“At this point, dealers need inventory and they are buying, but at the same time the economy is still in a slowdown and they are also seeing it on their lots.
“We do get repossessions. On a weekly basis, we are running cars for CitiFinancial, Triad and other finance companies.
“I would say as many as 25 percent of our sales could be repossessions on any given week.
“We do a powersports sale once a month, and we also do a salvage and mechanical disabled vehicles every other week.
“We run about 85 units of salvage and mechanically disabled units.
“We have about a high 80-percent range of sale on those.
“We will run some highline units here. We do not have a specific highline lane here but basically we will sell them if we have them.
“Our average vehicle is about $6,800. This is about the same as last year.
“Trucks and SUVs are doing very well right now.
“As it is getting closer to tax season a lot of dealers are looking for that $3,000 to $5,000 vehicle.
“If we have them, we will sell them.
“No particular vehicle is doing bad right now. There are no other trends that we are seeing.”

GEORGIA
Dwayne Coker, sales manager, Day’s Chevrolet Inc., Acworth, Ga.:
“I’ve been in the used-car business for almost 20 years.
“I have about 125 used cars. I’ve got mostly domestic. We keep about 60 percent cars, 40 percent SUVs. It’s been about the same for the last year, year and a half.
“We sell on average about 65 to 80 used cars per month. It’s been running the same for a year. It’s off from what it was a year and a half ago by probably 20 to 30 cars a month.
“We use different lenders, prime, sub-prime.
“We get our cars from dealer auctions. The prices are going up at auctions. The last five, six months, just because everybody’s new car
inventory is down. The plants have shut down and people have cut back and they aren’t producing the cars like they were. Everybody is replenishing their lots with late-model used cars to try and compensate.
“We advertise with Autotrader, Cars.com, our own Web site, we do a lot in magazines and a little in newspapers.
“I’ve got cars from $4,995 to $50,000 if you want it. I’ve got about everything. I keep a variety of cheaper stuff.
“The last car we sold was a 2008 Chevrolet Avalanche. The miles were in the mid-30s and we sold it for $33,900.”
ILLINOIS
Eric Nelson, owner, Nelson Automotive, Mt. Prospect, Ill.:.
“I’ve been in business in our current location for about two years.
“We keep an average of about 35 cars although right now I’ve got about 42. Our inventory has been growing. Last year at this time, our average inventory was about 20 to 25.
“Our inventory is probably about 85 percent cars and 15 percent SUVs and trucks. We keep probably 60 percent to 75 percent imports and the rest domestic.
“As an Internet retailer we find it a lot easier to move imported stuff in our market. We advertise on all the major Internet sources for used cars such as Autotrader, Cars.com, occasionally eBay.
“We have a  retail lot. We used to be pure Internet, but we do have a show room and a parking lot filled with cars on a major busy street.
“However, 90 percent of our sales are still from the Internet.
“We work with a couple of local banks to provide customer financing and I do maybe one or two cars a month of buy-here, pay-here, when it makes sense.
“I do my own buying. I go to the three Manheim auctions in my area. I also buy cars off the street and take trade-ins. 
“Prices at the auctions are horrendously high still. I am just waiting for them to spike downwards. Prices have been going up for the last six months.
“I would assume that the high prices are just because of supply and demand.
“That there is more demand for people looking to buy used cars. There is less supply because there are fewer vehicles coming off lease and there are fewer trade-ins since we had the Cash for Clunkers crush up a bunch of cars that would have otherwise made it into the used car market.
“More demand, less supply, you see way higher prices. The average price for our cars has dropped. It used to be between $12,000 and $13,000, and now it’s down to $7,000 to $8,000.
“I see dealers not pricing cars because they think people will call in to find out the price, which does not work at all.
“If you don’t put a price out there people assume there is no price because it’s too high. It’s the same with mileage; people don’t call because they think the miles are too high to list.
“The last car we sold was a 2003 Acura TL, type S, 69,000 miles and it sold for $8,600.
“We also sold a 2004 Ford Crown Victoria with 106,000 miles for $4,000.”
OKLAHOMA
Leonard Shockley, general manager, Best Buy Auto Sales, Ardmore, Okla.:.
“Junior Lorentz, owner of Best Buy, has been in business since 1952. I’ve worked with him for about 4 years. We usually keep around 150 cars on the lot. We sell more trucks and SUVs than we do cars. I would say 80 percent trucks and SUV. They are mostly domestic. We buy a few foreign cars, but they are harder to find than domestic cars. There are not as many foreign cars on the market.
“We do buy-here, pay-here. We will sell for cash, but we don’t buy anything with the thought in mind to sell it for cash. If someone wants to go get their own financing through a bank, we can do that. But we don’t have any financial institutions that we go to.
“Lorentz and I split the buying of the cars about 50-50. We have about three auctions we go to. We have one south of Ardmore, one about 40-50 miles north of here and one in Oklahoma City.
“Everything a little while back went through the roof, but things have been slow lately. I think things are coming down some. 
“Nobody is selling anything, everybody is sitting on what they’ve got. Business has really taken a downturn lately. I think it’s just the economy in general.
“I don’t think the Cash for Clunkers helped the buy-here, pay-here note dealers. I don’t think it helped the business at all. I think it took  a lot of cars and trucks out of the market. By and large they took a lot of junk out of the market, but I think they took a lot of good cars and trucks off the market too. Good cars were just trashed. We do some advertising on the radio, and we have a bi-weekly news paper that we advertise in.
“We usually sell cars from $5,995 to $14,995. The last car I sold was a 2004 Chevy Trailblazer, sold it for $9,995 with just under 100,000 miles on it.”

missouri
Peggy Sprenger, general manager,Manheim Kansas City, Kansas City, Mo.:
“Sales have been strong all year.
“We continue to see a high demand for quality used cars.
“On average, we are
running 2,000 vehicles weekly through our
12-lane facility.
“Due to the demand for used vehicles, we are seeing double-digit increases in new buyers across various sales avenues. On average, we have been drawing 1,900 buyers to our weekly sale.
“Our core customer segment is drawn from the Midwest region.
“(But) given the ease at which vehicles can be bought, sold and transported, we also gain business on a global basis.
“We are observing dealers (in the lanes who) appear optimistic.
“However, many do have concerns on future inventory volumes and where they will be derived given the overall shrinking
market.
“Our dealer consignment volume has declined due to the reduced number of new-car trades.
“Our fleet-lease business is holding steady.
“I think across the industry everyone is seeing this as a challenge given the uncertainty in the economy.
“We do service some factory accounts. I think, like the rest of the industry, this tends to be a challenging area, even though we are experiencing strong retention.
“Trucks and sport utility vehicles continue to be in demand. We have seen a decline in higher-mileage vehicles.
“We were extremely proud to receive performance awards at this year’s National Auto Auction
Association convention.
“I am very proud of the team in Kansas City and I feel the awards speak to our commitment to provide high quality service to all of our clients.”
OKLAHOMa
Mike Cloptin, general manager/partner, Oklahoma Auto Exchange, Oklahoma City, Okla.:
“Business is going well. We had the best September we’ve ever had. A lot of times, the month of September is kind of an off month in Oklahoma.
“But this year, we sold about 2,000 cars in September. For a three-lane auction, that’s a pretty good month.
“We ran about 3,456 during the month. So, when you sell 57 percent of your cars in Oklahoma, that’s a good sale.
“Last year, we sold 1,251 out of 2,465, which is almost 51 percent. Even though we had an extra sale this year, we’re still averaging more cars. We averaged selling 300 a week last year, this time, and we’re averaging about 400.
“Our dealers are mainly coming from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and few from Colorado. That’s about it.
“Right now, we’re drawing about 260 buyers in the lanes each week. That’s probably about the same number as this time last year.
“This is a blue-collar area, so even though things have been tough, these dealers are pretty resilient.
“I anticipate that dealers will rebound, even though the month was difficult.
“We’ve got pretty much all of the new-car stores in the Oklahoma City area. We struggle a lot with the national companies, because they don’t know who we are.
“We want to win (the market) at home. In Oklahoma City, we want people to know who we are and that we’ll take care of the dealers and do what we say we’ll do.
“So, in addition to almost all of the new-car stores in the area, we’ve got Bank of Oklahoma and Tinker Federal Credit Union. Those are the two largest lending institutions in the state.
“The thing that’s different is getting national institutions to know who we are. That’s the challenge for us.
“We haven’t spent a lot of time on national accounts, but I think this is a place where they’d do
really well.
“We also have some fleet-lease. We run about 100 fleet-lease vehicles a week. They sell well, about 80 percent.
“For us, fleet-lease has grown some because we’ve added a few new accounts. However, the
accounts that might have run 15 cars a sale last year may run five or six this year.
“We’re just trying to increase our volume through numbers (of accounts). That’s going to be a time-consuming pro-cess.
“I played football at Oklahoma and I worked there for 13 years in the athletic department. We got fired because we lost too many games. At Oklahoma, you better not lose too many. (University of Oklahoma football) will make car salesman or insurance salesman out of anybody.
“The auction business is a pretty easy business as long as we remember that we‘re in the service business. Our sign at our auction is ‘If we don’t serve you, we don’t deserve you.’
“We still have GSA sales once a month. Their volume has actually increased a little bit this year.
“Last year, we might have run 15 in an October sale. This year, we’ll have a sale on Oct. 28 and run about 70.
“So far, the government has sold about 1,209 vehicles here. We’ll probably sell close to 1,400 in 2009.
“Part of that is due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, where they provided a few more vehicles for federal
agencies.
“Those are mostly standard passenger vehicles. We’ll get about 10 percent trucks, 10 percent vans and the rest are regular sedans.
“Overall, I think the
low-mileage stuff is selling well here, something below 50,000 miles. I’m talking something that a franchise store can put on their retail lot.
“What’s really surprised me is the Cash for Clunkers program. I thought it would raise the price of the cheaper cars.”