Disappearing Dealers

If you drive through South Florida, you might not notice that across the U.S. the automotive retail landscape is shifting.
According to a study by a consulting group that does this stuff, the number of new-car auto dealerships in the U.S. dropped by about 1,600 stores.
What, you hadn't noticed?
Well, part of that may be because there are still 18,841 new car dealerships in the United States. With 11 million cars sold last year in the U.S., that's still an average of close to 600 cars a year being sold per dealership.
Part of the reason for loss of 1,600 dealerships, of course, is the turmoil of U.S. manufacturers such as Chrysler and GM. But lets face it, another reason is that there are just too many doggone dealerships.
Here is South Florida, we're not seeing a bunch of empty dealerships lining Federal Highway. Instead what we're seeing is a little bit of musical chairs, with dealerships changing owners and and in some cases brands.
In the last year, South Florida has seen a Honda dealership and a Toyota store, both struggling to some degree, being taken over by the largest private dealership company in the country. And we're seeing mergers and and changes and big fish gobbling up little fish.
For car buyers, well, the South Florida market - especially when it comes to luxury vehicles - is as competitive as ever. And that's very good news.