Report: NY car dealers still struggling
Customers look over some of the new Jeep lineup including the Jeep Liberty, left, Jeep Wrangler, center, and Jeep Grand Cherokee, right, at Smith Haven Dodge Chrysler Jeep in St. James. Credit: John Dunn
The New York City region's major new-car dealer group has issued its first assessment in three years of the local auto retailing business, covering 2010, and it shows a downsized cadre of retailers still struggling to recover from the recession.
But sales have improved since the period covered in the report. Although final regional registration figures for last year aren't in yet, consultants retained by the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association said that, through November, they rose by 2.3 percent from a year earlier.
"The industry is optimistic that we'll continue to be on the rebound and get stronger as time goes on," said association president, Mark Schienberg.
The association covers Nassau, Suffolk and seven other counties and says its 410 members operate about 600 dealerships. The new assessment said local dealers sold 403,000 new cars in 2010, down from 428,000 in 2007, the year covered in the group's last economic assessment. The local market troughed in 2009 at about 343,000 vehicles, the consultants said.
Local dealers sold another 308,000 used vehicles in 2010 -- as pre-owned vehicles became an increasingly important component of their business. There was no comparable figure for 2007.
Schienberg says dealership ranks fell by about 7 percent from 2007 to 2010, with consolidations especially of Chrysler, General Motors and Ford outlets as gasoline prices soared in 2008 and the recession hit with joblessness and foreclosures.
The report for 2010 estimates that local auto retailers pumped $24.9 billion into the region's economy in that year, through payrolls and other expenses and a ripple effect -- up from $23.4 billion in '07, as new cars got more expensive.
The report said dealerships employed 31,205 people in 2010, down from 33,880 in 2007.
Schienberg says many dealers coped with a decline in new-vehicle sales by doing more repairs as customers kept cars longer and components wore out. The report says the average dealership repaired and serviced more than 20,000 vehicles in 2010, up from 18,500 in 2007.
The assessment said dealers' overall advertising spending in this region fell from $441 million in 2007 to $385 million in 2010. Schienberg said some of those dollars were diverted to Internet lead generators like Autobytel and that dealers also are using social media to get their messages out.
