It is an old-school dealership – the owner doesn’t sell, but if you want to talk to him, he is on-site. I absolutely hate those overwrought dealerships with the trendy showrooms, etc. – Lexus dealerships remind me of a shopping mall.

Keep the overhead low, and provide good service – it works for me.

CAG does have dealerships for Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Volvo and Suzuki. Only the latter three sharing showrooms.

Subaru and Nissan have a long history together from when Nissan was a stakeholder. Their partnership only ended when Nissan fell on hard times in the 90s. Subaru works with Nissan on various part sharing initiatives. That may not last with the new Toyota partnership.

All of the Subaru dealerships near me share facilities with other brands. Actually they all share with Nissan surprisingly enough. How are the demographics between Subaru and Nissan?

Subaru/Ford/Nissan
Subaru/Chrysler/Nissan
Subaru/Isuzu/Nissan

Ford seems to be following the “starve the dealers” strategy. We have the cars, but Ford is being very stingy on the rebates and cheap financing. Ford really seems to putting it on the dealers to sell the product and seems content to sell only to those customers who want to buy Fords. I can’t imagine 3 or 4 nearby Ford dealers lasting through 2008.

Team is a very interesting organization. There is a remarkable level of divergency in quality within their dealer network. Some are world class operations. Others have owners who only survived because they were the only game in town for a long time.

It always interested me how GM hasn’t been too prejudiced against offering the larger dealer networks multiple franchises, while outfits like Toyota or Honda typically try very hard to avoid them. I believe the later strategy is the better one. But Toyota and Honda had the luxury of building up while the domestics had to cut their networks down to reflect the market shift.

One other thing… I actually thought about becoming a Subaru dealer with another fellow who was bought out by Team many, many years back. If Toyota really did want to pursue Subaru as a new division, I could see the potentiality of selling Subarus and Scions together in the same dealership. There’s a lot of demographic crossover between the two and virtually no cannibalization. I’m not sure if stand alone Subaru dealerships will remain viable in my neck of the woods over the next few years.

EG, the Team Hyundai/Mazda/Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealership near me last february moved from an old location to shiny new digs in the shiny new Vallejor automall.

Well, Hyundai/Mazda got a shiny new showroom. The GM cars, on the other hand, are on the lot next door with a shiny new porta-trailer serving as the office, looking quite like the cheap used car lot. Groundbreaking is supposed to occur this summer, a year and a half AFTER the move was completed!

I suspect the Team corporate owners are hoping for a buyout of the franchise before they bother to build a new dealership.

Another dealership in Claremont, CA located next to the 10 freeway closed on December 31. There were still trucks on the lot when I drove by the dealership on New Year’s Day.

I wonder if these dealers can weather the loss of their domestic franchise by leaning on their import franchise.