Auto Dealer Monthly, June 2017

6 auto dealer today June 2017 O n t h e P o i n t PHOTO GETTYIMAGES COM ZARGON DESIGN join the battle of jericho The Alpha Dawg sounds a warning as factory incentives an off lease tidal wave and self driving cars bring the walls of the auto retail industry a tumblin down Jim Ziegler is president of Ziegler SuperSystems Inc and one of the industrys most recognizable experts trainers and speakers Contact him at jim ziegler@ bobit com By Jim Ziegler the biblical story of Joshua at the Battle of Jericho for the entire adult congregation We were dressed in robes and head dressings made of towels Our parents thought we were cute and there were a lot of flashbulbs going off in their Kodak Brownie cameras I was too young to be embarrassed I remember thinking This is so cool Our performance went off without a hitch We marched around the city made out of a packing crate seven times singing and blowing our plastic horns Joshua fought the battle of Jericho Jericho Jericho Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin down After seven times around we stopped walking stopped singing and started yelling Someone offstage pulled a string and the cardboard walls of Jericho came tumblin down Smiling as I write these words I checked YouTube and found a video of a bunch of modern day children marching around a cardboard city of Jericho Sixty three years later they are still singing that same old song and blowing their plastic horns What made me travel back through time and dredge up that ancient memory of a really forgettable childhood moment It was that line in the song when we all stopped and sang and the walls came tumblin down Ive been researching this article for hours and frankly all the current news coming out of the car business is downright depressing The One Two Punch For months perhaps a year now Ive been screaming that were falling back into the abyss I wrote about it blogged about it and spoke about it frequently often to no avail This runaway train was speeding toward disaster The market is approaching total saturation Customers are buried in cars they can no longer trade out of with terms that will keep them buried for years to come And the manufacturers continue to flood the market with cars there are no buyers for Weve all stood by and watched them travel down the same path of increasing subsidies cheap leases and escalating rebates and incentives They have stranded an increasing supply of unsold cars on dealers lots nationwide This has led to the largest glut of unsold inventory since 2008 General Motors leads the pack in irresponsibly flooding the market with excess inventory GM has led the market with a 17 share year to date but at what price As they try to sustain the unsustainable theyve resorted to higher fleet sales and cheap leases to drive sales with incentives that are now the highest since before the Great Recession Now those puppies are coming home and theyre trying to find a way to sell them They have propped up the market for the short term with a squishy foundation As predicted we have arrived at the reckoning I recently read an article from Reuters that echoed pieces I wrote four and five months ago Between now and 2019 theyre saying an L ittle Jimmy Ziegler was only 7 years old but I still remember it vividly as if it were only yesterday It was Grace Lutheran Church in Jacksonville Fla We were performing a reenactment of