William Maley
Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com
January 2, 2013
Dealerships are used to to training sales and service professionals, and buying new tools when new models arrive. But for a small subset of Chevrolet dealers, the cost of selling the Volt and its pricey additional tool and equipment costs are causing them to stop selling the Volt.
A new report from Automotive News says that a small number of dealers have decided to stop selling the Volt due to the specialized equipment costs and GM requiring a more significant investment in the near future, and slow sales not being able to recuperate those investments.
Last year, 2,614 Chevrolet dealers were certified to sell the Volt (out of 3,079 dealerships). 70% of Volt sales came from 300 highest-volume dealers – leaving the remaining 2,314 dealerships to fight for the remaining 30 percent.
"Going forward, the profitability would be really hard for us to justify the expense of the repair tools," said Allyn Barnard, owner of Jim Barnard Chevrolet in Churchville, New York. The dealer only sold five Volts last year.
Other dealers are toughing it out. John Holt, owner of John Holt Chevrolet-Cadillac in Chickasha, Oklahoma says even though he has sold five Volts last year, he'll be sticking with the Volt partly due to the new Cadillac ELR coming out.
"I've heard that a lot of the non-metro dealers have opted out" of the certified Volt program said Holt. "But with the new Cadillac coming, I figured I'd be foolish not to buy the damn $5,100 tool."
Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)
William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.
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