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Saturday, October 4, 2008
Battling the auto-sales slump
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last month, Jeff Burg sold eight cars at the Ed Voyles Acura dealership off Peachtree Industrial Boulevard.
In a good month, the Norcross resident sells 15 or more. But sales are dwindling.
“It’s tough man,” said Burg, who’s sold vehicles for six years. “The pressure is on.”
Nationwide, auto sales have plunged. Dealerships have closed, including Bill Heard Chevrolet, the Columbus-based firm that shut down 15 locations and laid off 2,700 workers.
Major automakers reported a 26 percent drop in U.S. sales for September; the Detroit Three reported a double-digit decrease in sales.
The headlines reinforce what Burg already knows.
“There is not much traffic,” he told me. “I know people who have been doing this for 20 years, and they say they’ve never seen anything like this.”
He runs through the usual factors offered as explanations for the decline in automobile purchases. High gas prices. The credit freeze. Stricter loan financing. For Burg, all translate into fewer deals.
“People don’t have money for a down payment,” he said. “Banks are looking for people with pretty strong credit. If you’re a little shaky, they are saying, ‘no.’ It used to be you could work with Bank of America or Wachovia or whatever for a better rate. Now they say, ‘Nope, we’re not doing it. If you don’t like it, too bad.’ “
How’d it get to this point?
First, let’s tone down the volume from the economic experts and analysts with pedigrees. View the economic meltdown, instead, through the eyes of a common man with common sense. One root cause of the crisis stems from the fact that capitalism has been hi-jacked by a five-letter word.
G-R-E-E-D. Corporate greed. Political greed. Materialistic greed — in which many of us pine for items, products and stuff that we really can’t afford, yet feel entitled to. The party had to come to an end, had to crash at some point. The housing market collapsed first, and now it appears banks and the auto industry will suffer domino effects. Who knows what sector will tumble next.
Burg has faith the current financial crisis will rebound sooner, not later.
After all, he said, gas prices and the local supply already appear to be stabilizing. We’ll elect a new president in 31 days.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told me. “I don’t know what the time table is, but I hope in October, [the auto industry] springs back. People need cars, and we have a great inventory and a great manager.”
I talked to Burg on the second day of October. His month had started off on a positive note.
He’d already sold one car.
Fourteen more to go.
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