McLEAN, Va. (April 24, 2012) – When looking at the return-on-investment of factory-mandated dealership renovations programs, a “first-of-its-kind” study commissioned by the National Automobile Dealers Association indicates there’s no solid data that new-car dealers would sell one more vehicle by investing $1 million in the dealership.

“That was the bottom line of the study,” said NADA Chairman Bill Underriner, in a recent interview on AutoFocus with David Hyatt, a public affairs talk show recorded in Studio One at NADA headquarters in McLean, Va. “We commissioned that [study] last year with Glenn Mercer, a former partner with McKinsey and Company. He’s a consultant who really knows his way around the auto industry. This was an objective, fact-based study.”

Automakers have had mixed reactions to the findings of the study, said Underriner, a new-car dealer in Billings, Mont., who says the No. 1 issue for NADA today is facility mandates. So far, the NADA leadership has met with 12 manufacturers to discuss the study.

“It was all over the board. We had some manufacturers that said maybe we ought to slow down the process a little bit and take a look at this,” he said. “We’ve had other manufacturers that were farther down the road ... but were 85 percent complete with [their] facility planning. We had some that said that’s a great idea. We haven’t started our facilities planning yet, but we’ll take it into consideration.”

Underriner added that the next step for NADA is to include a discussion of the facilities study at the upcoming round of Dealer Attitude Survey meetings with 30 auto manufacturers.

To view the AutoFocus interview, click here. For the full report, click here.

The NADA Story

The NADA story began in 1917 when 30 auto dealers traveled to the nation’s capital to convince Congress not to impose a luxury tax on the automobile. They successfully argued that the automobile is a necessity of American life, not a luxury. From that experience was born the National Automobile Dealers Association. Today, NADA represents nearly 16,000 new-car and -truck dealers, with 32,500 franchises, both domestic and international. For more information, visit www.nada.org.

Contact:

David Hyatt
Vice President
NADA Public Affairs
(703) 821-7120
dhyatt@nada.org 

Charles Cyrill
Director of Public Relations
NADA Public Affairs
(703) 821-7121
(216) 870-8837 (m)
ccyrill@nada.org