Back in the day, Toyota used local businessmen to find dealers and deal with local politics. ToMoCo eventually bought its distributors, save Southeast Toyota in Florida and Gulf States Toyota in Houstonm (who still control prices, model mix and availability in 10 states). In the '90s, Southeast shelled-out more than $100m to dealers who claimed the distributor was forcing them out of business. CNNMoney reports that Gulf States is now under the gun for "improperly encouraging" executives from a large dealer group to leave their company and buy a lucrative dealership in Dallas. Toyota continues to defend its distributors, claiming they "bring a culture of innovation, responsiveness and agility." What's more, consumer prices "are the same" or "even more competitive" than prices in regions where there are no distributors. If there's anyone who can give your perspective on dealing with a Toyota distributor, please contact us.
5 Comments on “Toyota Distributors Under Fire...”
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My 2 cents. Generally speaking , a Toyota dealer has a much better relationship with the factory/distributor than his Nissan counterparts have had with their factory. The proof is in the locations and the physical size of the dealers. Nissan dealers compete more with themselves{on price} than most other Japanese brands.
No one here knows about Southeast Toyota unless you worked for a Toyota store. During the 90’s Southeast would load up then-hot 4Runners with custom wheels, graphics, tint, etc. BEFORE the dealer got them, thereby ensuring that Southeast got most of the profit on those accessories. This also meant it was extremely hard to locate some models without those accessories. I don’t think they are doing as much of that any more, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they still do.
As far as I know they still do. I used to work for Southeast Toyota (the company Jim Moran founded). This was five years ago. They would bring Toyotas into their processing center in Jacksonville, FL and put in their own leather seating, door panels, radios, wheels, etc. It’s litterally a manufacturing plant. I was told by another employee that they would cut off the basic seat fabric and re-upholster the seats in leather. The whole thing seemed terribly inefficient to me but I guess they made a ton of money doing it.
They also own the nations best performing Lexus dealership in South Florida.
Gulf States used to do a lot of the same stuff. I suspect they still would given the chance of a hot car.
I sold GST a bunch of computer equipment, but I don’t know about dealing with them from a car dealer perspective. They run like a small family business in many ways, only bigger and wealthier.
The employees I dealt with all liked the Friedkens.
That explains the Florida Prius I bought that had some nonsense car care package on the sticker (I think it was an $800 option).
I hope Toyota rethinks this inefficient distribution model. .
Curious, does anyone know if Lexus’ are distributed the same way?