There are winners in every financial disaster. There are always a few folks– heroes or scoundrels depending on how they make their profits– who understand that the Chinese symbol for danger and opportunity are one and the same. GM’s impending bankruptcy (and likely Ford as well) will produce some winners. But not without serious financial and psychological risk to those who seek their fortune from misfortune. For those of you with a robust constitution, here’s one potential game plan for GM’s C11. First, some background for those uninitiated in the ways of the American automobile business…
The new car business has always been a boom or bust industry. There’s no such thing as steady growth; sales go up or down in multi-year cycles. During the last decade, Detroit’s fobbed-off excess production on rental car companies, commercial fleets and retail buyers. The strategy helped maintain cash flow. But it distorted sales levels and became a pattern of value destruction. Worse, the automotive sales cycle is now at new lows, with as many as four million units sliced off a “false” peak of nearly 17 million units just a few years ago.
The car business depends on the availability of credit at every level. GM will have to obtain new financing– either from the government or private debt/equity–- to remain in business in North America. Its dealers will need floorplan and buyers of retail paper. It’s a chicken or egg scenario. No one will lend to GM-brand dealers and customers if there’s any question of whether the parent company can stay in business. Even then, it’s still riskier than lending to Toyota dealers and customers. The only variable will be product pricing; GM’s vehicles will have to be priced accordingly to make up for the extra cost of the financing and bankruptcy risk.
And that’s the opportunity. Buy Chevrolet and Cadillac (and Ford) dealerships now and into 2009 at fire sale prices from distraught dealers. It’s the bottom of the sales cycle and credit is not available. A firestorm of distress that will pass. One just needs the capital to survive the first few months after the filing. New car sales will still be depressed overall, and even worse for GM and Ford due to consumer and lender uncertainty. But that’s temporary– especially if GM follows the previously predicted prescription and launches a series of massive TV advertising and cut-rate pricing (like distress sale levels). Honor the warranty. Keep the flag raised – don’t surrender.
Within eighteen months or so, the recession will end. Banks will again lend and get greedy to find new revenue streams. GM will still be around, producing fewer cars only for its two remaining brands. But those brands will have the best vehicles from across the entire GM lineup.
Chevy will offer the following: Aveo, Cruze, Malibu, Impala, Lucerne (nee Buick), Camaro and Corvette. And maybe a Volt or two. Its Traverse, Tahoe, Avalanche, and Suburban models also remain. But the truck business– that’s where GM will still score (as will Ford) big profits. The housing business drives the pick up truck market and it still belongs to the domestic brands. Housing will come back and so will the truck market. Chrysler will no longer be alive to bother anyone. Chevy will still fight with Ford for light pickups, but at least GMC down the street will be boarded-up and closed.
Likewise, Cadillac will remain as a luxury brand incorporating the best in engineering and design from Detroit. No corners are scrimped, no more Cimmaron mistakes. Rededicated to its roots as the “Standard of the World,” GM’s ability to reshape its mark will continue, especially free from the distraction of the GM dysfunctional brand family.
The surviving GM dealers will have two brands offering complete and distinct vehicles without suffering from internecine warfare. GM, under new executive management and with new owners (maybe even private equity players) will be smaller in North America. But they’ll have products that meet or beat the foreign competition. And with its restructuring, GM can again be profitable at smaller volumes.
It’s a classic “buy low, sell high” strategy. There will be no shortage of Chevrolet and Cadillac stores for sale soon, most for real estate value only or less. Better stores, within markets having significant units in operation already, have a base of customers needing warranty work and service that can keep a store alive. And the used car business, when run right, provides a stream of profits as well.
Assuming GM it makes it through Chapter 11, avoiding Chapter 7 liquidation, the value of remaining Chevrolet and Cadillac stores will soar. Easy money– if you know how to run a car dealership and can stomach the risk. Anyone ready to bankroll me?
Or, you buy a distressed dealership and it sucks up a zillion dollars and you declare bankruptcy still waiting for the ship to right itself. Never ever put yourself in a business plan that depends on a bankrupt company coming back so fast you only need capital to ride out “a few months” of losses.
Are you seriously saying that GMs product lineup after 18 months of bankruptcy is going to be beating the competition?
Here’s my way to make some money on GM’s C11: Buy some stock in Hyundai. It’s pretty low now, and they are pretty much guaranteed to benefit from the fall of the D3 whether GM comes out of this fresh faced or toe tagged.
Sorry, can’t help you. I gambled away all my money buying up Packard franchises in 1954, Clipper franchises in 1956, Hudson franchises in 1957, Edsel franchises in 1958, Studebaker franchises in 1964 and Daewoo franchises in 2002.
Minor point in the grand scheme of a well done article: why does the new GM need to sell the Impala and Lucerne (Caprice?) side-by-side? Combine them into one product as a large FWD sedan more distinct and larger from the current Malibu and reserving the large RWD sedan for Cadillac.
I would not make the bet. I see the GM name being so damaged in the future, that it will be not be repairable. The competition, such as Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, Suzuki etc can flood the market with vehicles offering more features, as good or better workmanship and lower prices, with better reputations. California, where I live, is not going to recover economically for a long time, if ever. I believe many in the midwest will be royally pissed at GM for the way they were “managed” into bankruptcy and thus screwing a lot of people out of retirements, health care etc that a lot of that market will be gone. Lots of the east coast is already lost to GM. What does that leave? Not much. I wouldn’t risk a nickle on anything associated with GM in the future.
Also, a distressed dealership now is one of the weaker dealers. Exactly the people GM wants to cut.
What do you do when GM files, tells you your franchise is terminated, and the bankruptcy court tells you to sit and spin?
Maybe I’m to risk averse, but buying a dealership now sounds like a sure way to end up losing your shirt.
re: “Within eighteen months or so, the recession will end.”
By Ken Elias / October 15, 2008
you seem fairly confident of that prediction. i’m not.
this economic downturn could easily last ten or fifteen years before many markets re-emerge robustly.
i’ve even heard this meltdown described as the first step in the financial fall of a great empire.
for most people, caution must be a paramount concern going forward.
“But those brands will have the best vehicles from across the entire GM lineup…Chevy will offer the following: Aveo…”
You almost had me until I got to Aveo. Not exactly GM’s best.
Ken, while I admire your chutzpah, I don’t agree with your financial analysis results. While there are a lot of areas where you can make money in a recession, buying a bankrupt automaker dealer isn’t one that comes to mind.
Wouldn’t it be better to look at who’s making the aftermarket parts, see who’s having credit issues, and buy them instead? This way you are disconnected from the possibility that no one buys any new GM vehicles. Instead, you are just there to satisfy the current demand for GM parts to keep the already sold cars running.
I say this because in an economic downturn it is much more likely that people will keep their cars longer and fix the problems than buy new cars. In this way you make money while new car dealers starve. After two years of generating nice looking financial results you sell the business for a profit.
That is some suprisingly facile analysis. “How to Make Money” without mentioning a single dollar figure. It’s like reviewing a car without mentioning how many HP is has, or, you know, whether it’s an I4, V6, or whatever…
The crucial question that isn’t even brought up, let alone answered, is “how do you make sure you aren’t catching a falling knife here?” Because to my untrained eye we’re just entering the downturn. There will be plenty of blood spilled in the near future and you need to make the case why it won’t be yours.
“Lots of the east coast is already lost to GM”.
I drive back and forth from Providence, RI to Cape Cod everyday. Sometimes I count the domestic cars, excluding trucks, suv’s and vans, to amuse myself. If I make it to double digits in each direction that’s a good day.
The other thing that amazes me is that even though my car gets 30 mpg, it still costs me $65 a week in gas. The number of pickups and suv’s blowing by me doing 85-90 mph is incredible. How do they afford it? Must be costing them $100+ a week in gas.
The only ones who’ll make money on GM’s Bankruptcy are the lawyers and GM management who take their golden parachutes.
The flaw in the the plan is that the franchise agreement you bought cheap might not survive the BK. Then you have nothing but an ex-GM car dealer lot with no right to sell GM’s cars there.
Second… who knows what mish-mash of state franchise laws are out there the come in to play once GM tried to cancel franchises while in BK. If your franchise agreement survives, then there is a good chance that your competitor’s franchise agreement will also survive. Now you have more merchants chasing a smaller slice of pie.
So the only way to make this plan work is to buy ALL the franchises in the market area and shut them down yourself.
An interesting strategy.
Probably only works if Obama wins, which will be very bullish for UAW affilitated car mfgrs and by association their dealers.
Wait til Nov 5th.
Then follow the smart money.
See if Penske (UAG) is buying or selling GM franchises.
Sorry, but I believe that this would be a great way to lose bucketloads of money. It’s a buy low, sell lower strategy.
There are already too many dealerships in the US. Despite their dishonesty, car dealerships tend to generate low margins. There is no need to replace failing dealerships with new dealerships. We don’t need more of them, we need fewer, more efficient ones.
A lot of those dealerships will be demolished. The well located ones on major boulevards will be replaced by retail centers once they have failed. Real estate developers who can handle the environmental issues related to the redevelopment of the good locations could stand to make some money, but that’s about it.
How to Make Money From GM’s Chapter 11:
Short sell GM stock just before GM files.
Ken Elias: The housing business drives the pick up truck market and it still belongs to the domestic brands. Housing will come back and so will the truck market.
Completely disagree on this one.
At best, the housing market will stop declining in value. We are not in for a return of the go-go years from 2000-2006. The rate of increase in real estate values since the turn of the century has been completely unsustainable.
Which means that people who were using home-equity loans to buy that full-size pickup and SUV will still be out of the market. Far fewer people will be able to use their homes as piggy banks. People will actually have to buy new vehicles out of their savings, or out of income (i.e., with loans).
One look at incomes and pickup prices tells me that the days of people driving to work in a Silverado or F-150 that largely hauls air are over. The people who need pickups will buy them, but there aren’t enough farmers, contractors and small business owners to buy close to a million each of the Silverado and F-150 every year, and they aren’t going to buy the high-end, well-optioned models. They will be purchasing WORK trucks.
If a reconstituted GM tries to once again make hay by relying on pickups and SUVs, it won’t be too successful. It will have to make money by selling Corolla and Camry competitors.
The biggest problem with this strategy is that the Big 3 will be ever more desperate to dump large numbers of dealers, and a C11 will make that very easy.
One more: don’t count on the new Dodge pickup to disappear so soon. It looks competitive. Also, the Tundra will be there to do some serious market share gobbling if/when the housing bust begins to turn around (in more than 18 months).
Interesting comments – most being very negative to the concept. Ok, that’s the whole point. The biggest winners could be those adventurous enough to take the risk while protecting the downside. If you buy for real estate value only (already discounted in today’s market), and can run on a breakeven basis or minor loss for a while, you might make it out of this dark period. Keep in mind that this strategy is predicated around a reorganization of GM with Chevy and Caddy as surviving brands. All other GM brands disappear. Also, there will be a winnowing of Chevy/Caddy stores by natural attrition during the reorg process too…so fewer remaining Chevy/Caddy dealers will survive anyways.
It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. In the early 1980s, thousands of dealerships closed too…and it was hard to see the future then.
The biggest winners could be those adventurous enough to take the risk while protecting the downside.
As a dealer, you can’t protect the downside. You naturally absorb tons of downside in the form of entry and overhead costs, yet you don’t control many of the key elements of the business: the product, product mix, marketing and the brand. You are captive to the talent of the existing management and the ability for management to bring new, desirable product to market, which are questionable at best.
There are already too many Chevy and Cadillac dealers. Most of the existing dealer network would have to collapse for there to be room for new entrants — it’s that excessive already. And dealer margins already suck as is, so the upside is low. This would be a low-return, very high risk venture with far less upside than downside.
That, and GM is not going to survive a Chapter 11 filing if it is undertaken anytime soon. There is no credit in the market today to support a reorganization, and the existing creditors would fight over the scraps. At this point, 11 really adds up to 7 (liquidation).
Ken, I’m with the others on this. Even if you buy for real estate value alone, then why bother trying to run a car dealership…wouldn’t it just be simpler to build a coffeehouse or maybe a McDonalds or Chipolte on that patch of land?
I sure wouldn’t try to sell GM, Ford, or Chrysler cars on that corner.
I get the whole yin/yang risk vs. reward thing. But more often than not, one who tries to catch a falling knife will just get hurt.
And make no mistake, GM is a falling knife.
The only way for this to work is to run a good service and used car operation. Banks and finance companies are more likely to do business with franchise dealers than independents, even a weak franchise, so buying domestic franchise on the cheap is a good way to get more banks to do business with them. The down side is the added overhead, headaches and loss of focus from the profitable sides of the business (used cars, service) that come with the new car business. The new car side can’t be the main focus of the business. It is a good opportunity for someone who knows the used car business well and is well capitalized.
A retired dealer told me the the way to end up with a million dollars in the car business is to start out with two million.
Menno’s first comment was hilarious! That’s all I have to say.
Sounds like the old joke…
What’s the easiest way to make a small fortune as a car dealer ?
Start with a large one.
Unfortunately I’m not seeing anything in the environment that’s indicating this will be over in 18 months. Unemployment rising, raises not forthcoming, car prices rising…
Economists never called this recession ahead of time, or they’ve been calling the bottom for two years now. They’re predictive track record is nil.
this may be a long haul, boys.
You didn’t say you were basically buying real estate with a dealership for free.
Of course dealership real estate generally runs for a several million dollars…
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. You could do ok if you could find distressed real estate in a high value area and have cash to put down. In that case, you would be be banking on the value of the lot itself rather than the dealership.
The last AMC dealer: http://www.gremlinx.com/AMC-Pikeville.htm
The housing business drives the pick up truck market and it still belongs to the domestic brands. Housing will come back and so will the truck market.
Completely agree with geeber’s response to this. Take a look at the housing inventory charts periodically posted at calculatedrisk.blogspot.com…inventory growth a couple years ago was the first sign of the housing bubble’s collapse, and inventory remains huge. It’s just now beginning to decline, but it has a long way to go. And, unbelievably, just this weekend I saw townhome construction still underway here in the SF Bay Area. Some builders are very slow to learn their lessons.
There’s a big echo in here today…and I’ll add to it. Rather than a recovery in early 2010, I’d place my bets on 2016-2020, if lady luck is with us. Oh yes, and that’s a return to a stable, sustainable economy, not a society predicated on aberrant perpetual growth (as was fraudulently foisted on a gullible public in recent years). It’s kind of funny how the swindler and the swindled got conned. Poetic justice, innit?
If you are so sure of a bankruptcy, short the stock. Whatever you do though, don’t buy a credit default swap, and then short it. Those guys are going to go to jail.
A GM dealership is a no-win for all the reasons listed above.
Shorting the stock on the other hand – now that might be interesting.
The trick to shorting is to hedge the short position with call options so that one doesn’t loose one’s ass.
March ’09 $9 strike GM calls are going for $1.80.
So, if one thinks that a Ch. 11 might happen by March ’09 here is an example of what he could do:
1) Buy the Call option for $180.
2) Short 100 Shares of GM, currently at $6.22.
If GM BKs then GM’s shares will probably fall to around .22 (to make the math easy), netting the short seller $600-$180, or $420.
If the government saves GM’s ass completely and shares jump to $20 on the announcement then the call option saves the short seller, and he looses ($9-$6.22)*100 + $180, or $460.
The possible losses are slightly higher than the possible gains, but if one is relatively sure of a BK then the odds, or net expected value, are with him.
Sure beats the hell out of betting the ranch on a GM dealership with its state franchise protections stripped away by a bankruptcy court.
My money is in IRAs, which don’t allow short selling, but if the above strategy makes you rich don’t forget to tip your random internet commenter.
I don’t know what the hell I was talking about above, but all you have to do is buy some long term near the money puts on GM and you’re set to profit from a GM BK.
Where I live, NYC metro area, the dealers located off major highways, or heavily traveled county roads, are dropping like flies. A few, very few, had their franchises purchased by other large dealers with highway locations, and the operations were combined at the highway store. I haven’t seen a single instance where one of the closed stores resumed as a car business in the same location. In many cases, not even real estate developers are interested in the land under the closed stores — EPA regs being just one reason. I know of at least a half dozen former car dealers that have been boarded up now for years, with no one interested in the property — this long before the start of Great Depression II.
I appreciate the effort. But this article shows that it’s very difficult to understand the dealer side of the business unless you’re inside of it.
As it applies to GM, only consolidators and lunatics are looking at a franchise play. The former usually has plenty of cash flow and access to financial sources… both of which are extremely critical to the survival of any dealer. If you want a newbie, go ahead. Good luck.
In the cities you’ll be going against dealers who have advertising budgets that are well into the six figures and in certain cases, even have their own finance companies. In the less populated areas it’ll more than take years upon years to even get half of what will be a dwindling pie. Then you have the independents who are more than happy to finance a vehicle at thousands of dollars less than your dealership, and with far lower overhead to maintain. Truth be known, the only fellows I see making a killing these days are those supporting the cash-rich immigrant populations, and those who finance the absolute dumbest of the dumb with shoddy products and well-funded legal times (to garnish the wages).
I’ve even had to go from strictly cash deals to offering financing because folks in much of metro-Atlanta simply don’t have money. Period. If you have the tolerance to finance folks on minimal down payments for long periods of time, and deal with everything from accepting merchandise in lieu of cash (got a Honda generator yesterday) to taking trade-in’s that were title pawned (1998 Honda Prelude), then the dealer world may not be for you.
Thankfully I haven’t had a repo yet, but when the job market goes south in 2009 I’m expecting a ton of them.
Nice write up Ken. There is a lot of wishful thinking in there that makes this a horrible investment, it’s just too much risk with very little chance for success. If this is going to be such a gold mind in the future then why would they be selling it now, don’t be the sucker they are looking for.
This recession/depression is not going to be over in 18 months, stop believeing the media drivel. House prices have 18-24 month of declines still left, then they will be almost flat for a year, then you will start to see increases, AT SUSTAINABLE LEVELS. Very few contractors will be making money to be buying fancy new trucks. Add in the fact that the used truck market will be flooded with low mileage trucks that were never used for work at dirt cheap prices and your truck resurgence falls flat. The housing market isn’t going to start to pick up again until you see the median housing price index drop just below $150,000. Last time I checked it was at $200,000 and still dropping slowly. The government can’t fix this it has to correct itself over time.
Your theory on GM surviving the Ch11 is flawed also, mostly wishful thinking. If GM was trying to survive Ch11 they would have filed already, Wagoner is going to push things unto their breaking point where survival will be almost nil. Their are too many cards stacked against them and a long deep recession is one of the big ones.
Also GM’s product has very few bright spots in the future that will be able to sustain that business. You think the current Malibu is going to be competative in 2 years time, it barely is now. The Cruze won’t generate enough profit, Impala will be very OLD and is already a fleet special and the CUV’s are too expensive for the economic conditions. The Volt is just a money loser.
The only chance your idea might be a success, provided you are still in business to witness it, is when the Chinese buy Chevy at auction along with the dealer network. What’s left of it at that point.
Man, for GM this article sounds like… Hope and Change. I seem to remember someone else peddling this…
menno: I gambled away all my money buying up Packard franchises in 1954, Clipper franchises in 1956, Hudson franchises in 1957, Edsel franchises in 1958, Studebaker franchises in 1964 and Daewoo franchises in 2002.
Well, it could have been worse. At least you didn’t jump on the Daihatsu bandwagon.
Some folks seem to believe that this economic downturn is “like nothing before” and I contend otherwise.
Fact of the matter is we live in a world where all currencies are by fiat, and all currencies are designed to inflate, giving the sovereign seingorage and frankly allowing the sovereign to deficit-spend every year while de-valuing its long-term debts it racks up by deficit spending. It’s not that complex. The current financial system reminds me of the Wizard of Oz…all this big-budget show that ultimately when peeled away reveals an old man with a Xerox copying $100’s.
Side-effect of that rigged scheme is economic growth by credit expansion. If the economy isn’t really growing fast enough to accomodate all those Xerox’ed $100’s you get asset bubbles because there’s no useful employment available for all that “capital.” Eventually reality intrudes (somehow). Aggressive credit-expansion followed by collapse followed by stagflation then repeat.
End result in a couple years is the ten-trillion dollar pile Uncle Sam owes is worth twenty or thirty percent less in buying power relative to the buying power actually borrowed initially. Pretty good racket. The only thing that can screw the cycle up and prolong the pain are the same morons who let the Xerox run to long not turning it off for a spell. That’s the only real difference between this and any other fiat money adjustment, the politicians are screwing things up more than usual in response by SPEEDING up the pages-per-minute coming out of the Xerox.
If the economy isn’t really growing fast enough to accomodate all those Xerox’ed $100’s you get asset bubbles because there’s no useful employment available for all that “capital.”
There were asset bubbles back when there was a gold standard. They were even worse, because the inability to create temporary infusions of liquidity turned those downturns into depressions.
Asset bubbles are not caused by fiat currencies, but by industrial growth sectors that grow too much, too fast, which pummel the banking system once they deflate.
The US experienced **several** depressions before 1929, not just the one that gets all of the attention. Almost all of these were preceded by rapid economic growth that eventually faltered and led to some sort of run on the banks.
Excessive credit contributed to the current problem, but ironically, excessive credit is what is needed to fix it. The key will be to make sure that the infusions of cash into the system are temporary, and not permanent.
Pch101:
The depressions of the gold-standard era by any measure were mild compared to the 30’s. The biggest difference between then and now is that the government prints our way out of these liquidity problems. That leads to two things that we are seeing or will see over the next couple years.
One-Politicians, being custodians of the Xerox, get to pick the winners and losers – at everyone’s expense. Lehman Brothers dies, AIG lives. The Detroit 2.8 will become (especially if Obama wins) a corporate version of Terry Schiavo, they should be dead, functionally are dead. But by the grace of outside Xerox-powered intervention, nature’s course is denied. These are long-term, very expensive political choices that in a system not Xerox-based, wouldn’t happen.
Two-When the liquidity crisis abates, everyone’s money is worth less because there’s more of it when there shouldn’t be.
I’m definitely not advocating a return to some gold-standard. But when there is no institutional control on politicians making money out of thin air, politicians will flog that power until there is ruin. When FDR by executive fiat in I believe 1933 essentially seized the people’s gold, they got $35 dollars an ounce in exchange for the gold. What is left of that gold is now sitting in Ft. Knox for the most part, and gold is trading right now for ~$900 and ounce. Who got the better deal there over the long term? We wuz robbed.
The depressions of the gold-standard era by any measure were mild compared to the 30’s.
Thanks to rapid development and a busy stock market during the 20’s, the US developed excessive industrial capacity that was fed by investor equity and extreme margin.
The Great Depression dragged on for several years, just as did the depressions that preceded it. It was deeper because the Hoover government responded to the crash with import trade and by reducing the money supply, exactly the wrong responses to the crisis. It was ended with a massive amount of government spending, spurred on by the war, which created employment and consumed the excess capacity created during the 20’s.
We have had zero depressions since FDR. We had 11 economic panic and depressions prior to FDR. The difference in track record is really, really obvious.
Psh101:
The excess industrial capacity of the USA in the twenties was driven by an export-driven economy supplying products to Europe, specifically the Brits and French. Much like China does with the USA today, we fed the Brits and France many a loan for them to spend money on their wars and social progressivism (the Great Game & WWI are expensive!) – and ironically, purchase all the junk our excess industrial capacity churned out for them. When Europe was forced to admit it was actually broke (the Brits punched out of the gold standard in ’29) the house of cards that fed money to that industrial engine collapsed. Government tinkering ensured the rest. FDR’s schemes staunched bleeding by printing money, and when that initial inflation was spent, the economy sputtered around until WWII.
As far as no depressions or panics since, that has to do I think with the new financial world post-WWII. America essentially had a monopoly on credible money with Bretton Woods “dollar = gold, all you yokels now take dollars” system. Free to abuse, we printed away and shipped the paper overseas and got goodies in return. When the French called our bluff and wanted the gold instead of the paper, within five years of that development we only offered paper (kinda like the Brits in ’29…wars on poverty and Vietnam are expensive!) when Nixon closed the gold window.
Averting depressions and panic since has been an excercise in borrowing and printing ever-more epic amounts of money to stave off the inevitable day of reckoning. Look at the debt piled up since the gold window closed, both public and private. That’s about the only difference I see in the “track record” since FDR’s ushering in of the imperial presidency: America’s excellent FICO and a Xerox.
hitguy: “California, where I live, is not going to recover economically for a long time, if ever.
philipwitak: “this economic downturn could easily last ten or fifteen years … I’ve even heard this meltdown described as the first step in the financial fall of a great empire.”
Gee, so you think the US is in worse shape than Germany and Japan in 1945?
One of the Rothschilds supposedly said they were rich because they bought “when blood is in the streets.”
Once Obama becomes Prez he and the Democraps wil bail out GM, Ford, and Chrysler. With Lutz, RW, BN, JL, MF, and company laughing all the way to the bank. This is how you make money off the peoples!
Why would a customer buy a new domestic car in the next couple years? There are too many good used cars on the market for customers with cash or good credit. For living paycheck-to-paycheck customers, Toyota can finance deals in ways Detroit can’t.
I see a better business in independent off-warantee vehicle repair for customers who are delaying the purchase of new cars. The opportunity is hiring away the best service technicians from dealers for failing brands. Top talent will be on sale.