Dealers

Back in 2000, Ford rolled out what it called its Blue Oval Certified dealer program to reward its best retail outlets for outstanding customer satisfaction. But after 11 years of mixed results, Automotive News reports that Ford has scrapped the plan. That's probably good news to dealers, since ...

When you buy beef jerky, some Bridgestones or a Bulgari, you don't spend six hours researching how much the retailer paid for the product. For that matter, when you buy a building, you don't ask how much the builder put into it. When it comes to cars, though, consumers can never be deterred from ...

It may sound obvious to say you should be wary of car salesmen on the phone, just as you should be wary of car salesmen in general. To hammer the point home, though, here are some audio files of Jerry Thibeau training salespeople at car dealerships, in this case a BMW dealership, to schmooze and ...

If you're in the market for a new car, today just might be your day. According to both Time and TrueCar.com, a perfect storm of factors have collided to make this the best day all year for consumers to get the greatest deal possible on a new hunk of sheetmetal. With a perfect mix of dealer ...

Today's piece of blatantly obvious news comes courtesy of J.D. Power and Associates. According to a new study, a whopping 52 percent of new car buyers said the main reason behind picking one car dealer over another was how they were treated on the lot. In fact, of those surveyed, only 38 percent ...

Lincoln has apparently had enough of small-town life. According to Automotive News, Ford's luxury brand plans to give its dealerships in metropolitan areas the lion's share of production moving forward. The company says luxury buyers are typically centered around larger cities, and as such, up to ...

The federal government is keeping up its effort to stimulate the economy, while the economy is keeping up its resistance to those efforts. The latest effort to prod spending comes in a bill that, among other things, increases the federal guarantee for small dealer floorplan loans from the Small ...

By September 22 the 600 Chrysler dealers given the chance to snag a Fiat dealership will need to have submitted their applications. A group of dealers are in Florida now and have been shown the U.S.-spec Fiat 500 Sport, and next month ...

A little more than a year ago, General Motors had in excess of 6,000 dealerships across the country. In the viability plan GM submitted to Congress the automaker stated it would shut down 400 dealerships every year, shedding 1,600 of them by 2012. The General said it eventually wanted to get down ...

When we first heard that Spyker was sniffing around Saab, our thoughts immediately leapt to visions of C12 Zagatos on every street corner, or at least in every Saab showroom. Believe it or not, our whimsy-laced version of reality may come true. According to Bloomberg, the Dutch supercar ...