Comments on: Toyota Distributors Under Fire

By: alexeck

alexeck — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:43:27 +0000

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?

By: Landcrusher

Landcrusher — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:47:28 +0000

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.

By: windswords

windswords — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:30:26 +0000

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.

By: rodster205

rodster205 — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:20:27 +0000

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.

By: frontline

frontline — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:42:19 +0000

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.