Good Morning,
Out of respect for the Johnson family and so all of our employees may attend the funeral service for Carly Lauren Johnson, the Strong family has closed our office from 8AM until 1PM (CST) Thursday, June 25th, 2009. We appreciate your understanding.
Regards,
John Paul
President Obama has signed the “Cash for Clunkers Bill“,
now called “CARS” (Car Allowance Rebate System).
NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Administration)
should have the program up and running by late July.
The law as it was signed will give the power to decide which vehicles will be eligible for the program to the dealers. The dealers will also be in charge of scrapping the older vehicles, which must be less than 25 years old to be eligible for federal funds. Clunker-eligible cars must be also owned for at least one year to qualify for the program. Those eligible for Cash-for-Clunkers will receive up to $4,500 towards the purchase of a new, more fuel efficient vehicle. To get the full $4,500, those new cars must be at least 10 mpg more fuel efficient than the older model they replace, and trucks must be 5 mpg more efficient. Among the details of the law still being worked out is a plan to ensure that dealers are, in fact, scrapping the vehicles and not reselling them.
ATTENTION SCION OWNERS!
Lighthouse Scion will be hosting a Scion Show-off on
Sunday, June 28th from 11AM-4PM at the Lighthouse Toyota dealership,
located at 2995 US Hwy 1 South in St. Augustine, Florida.
Strut your Scion stuff! Enter contests judging
Best Interior, Best Exterior, Best Sound System, Best in Show
and ‘Best Of’ for each Scion model:
xA, 1st and 2nd Generation xB, tC and xB.
Log on to LighthouseScion.com or come by the dealership
to fill out a Scion Showoff entry form.
Also, there will be free pizza, cold drinks, and a live DJ!
Plus, register to win prize giveaways.
See you there showin’ off your Scion and remember…
YOU CAN’T BRAG IF YOU DON’T BRING IT!
Three years ago we had the pleasure of one of Dennis Johnson’s daughters intern at the agency.
Carly worked with us the summer before she headed off to college.
This is a photo of Dennis and Carly taken at her going away party here at the office.
Early yesterday morning, Carly Lauren Johnson died in a car accident.
Dennis, Lisa and family,
We love you guys and will continue to keep you in our prayers.
Carly was a wonderful young lady and we will miss her very much.
Your family and friends at Strong.
Guest Blog by Strong, LLC
These latest technological advances may leave mark on auto industry
Robert Laberge / Getty Images
INTRODUCTION
Auto races and the engineering behind the cars gunning for the checkered flag are powerhouses of automotive technological innovation. See below to check out eight places where races and race cars are making a mark on the future of the industry, from proving the viability of alternative fuels to cars piloted by robots. Here, ethanol-fueled Indy cars make a lap at the Indianapolis 500.
Streeter Lecka / Getty Images
Race series has a green flag
Race cars competing in the American Le Mans Series, which is modeled after the 24 Hours of Le Mans but with shorter race durations, can win by crossing the finish line ahead of the pack or their green credentials. In the Green Challenge portion of the series, cars compete in categories such as fuel efficiency and level of their overall environmental impact. The competition, developed in partnership with the federal government and the engineering organization SAE International, is designed to promote development of alternative fuel technologies. The race cars run on three different types of fuel: E10 gasoline (a mixture of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline) E85 cellulosic ethanol, and zero-sulfur diesel. Race cars are seen here taking practice laps at an event in Braselton, Georgia.
Dirk Lammers / AP
Solar challenge promotes renewable energy
At price tags in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars, the streamlined cars seen zipping along in the American Solar Challenge competition, last held in 2008 on a 2,400 mile track from Plano, Texas, to Alberta, Canada, are unlikely to clog up highways anytime soon, but they do shed light on how solar and other renewable energy technologies could help power autos in the future. One idea is to outfit electric-gas hybrids cars with solar panels to charge up batteries while their owners toil away in office-park cubicles. The University of Michigan-designed car shown here took first place in the competition.
University of Warwick / AP
Formula 3 racecar shows racing can be green
Motorsports enthusiasts and tree huggers are unlikely bedfellows, but researchers at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom recently unveiled a Formula 3 racecar packed with engineering that shows off their green side. The steering wheel is made from carrot fiber; flax and hemp fibers are woven in to the body components; and it runs on biodiesel made with waste from chocolate factories and vegetable oil, for example. “The WorldFirst project expels the myth that performance needs to be compromised when developing the sustainable motor vehicles of the future,” project manager James Meredith said in a statement.
David Duprey / AP
Race showcases fuel-efficient vehicles
The Green Grand Prix, held annually in Watkins Glenn, N.Y., brings together enthusiasts of all sorts of newfangled alternative-fueled vehicles as well as traditional gasoline sippers to showcase technologies that can help free the U.S. from foreign sources of oil and be gentler on the environment. The marquee event is a 60-mile road rally along the region’s back roads. Entrants in the 2008 competition included the solar powered car and the 1913 Woods Electric car shown here.
Biofuel ethanol revs up Indy cars
The biofuel ethanol – made in the U.S. primarily with corn – got a boost in the public eye when the Indy Racing League announced a switch from natural-gas derived methanol to the plant-derived fuel in 2007. Ethanol backers say the switch helps prove to critics that the biofuel performs as well as other fuels – an industry that prides itself on speed wouldn’t go for a fuel that hinders the performance of their cars, the argument goes. In this image, the Team Ethanol car takes a practice lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
FuelVapor Technologies
An X prize for cars
More than 100 teams are competing to produce a commercially viable car that gets the equivalent of at least 100 miles per gallon of gas for a share of a $10 million purse. The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize is modeled after previous X Prize competitions that spurred breakthroughs in spaceflight and genetics. This one aims to spur the innovation needed to bring to market a car that gets the equivalent of at least 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. Entrants in the contest include the Alé hybrid vehicle by FuelVapor Technologies shown here.
Kiichiro Sato / AP
Gas capless: A NASCAR convenience for (Ford’s) masses
When Ford’s NASCAR racers pull in for a pitstop, the pit crew doesn’t mess around with a gas cap. There isn’t one. And now, many consumer models don’t have one either. The feature uses a spring-loaded flapper door that eliminates the need for a fuel tank screw cap, the company explains. The innovation means no more lost caps and less gasoline vapors escaping from the car to foul the environment and driver’s clothes. The feature is shown here on a 2009 F-150 pickup truck, the company’s top-selling vehicle.
Tangi Quemener / AFP – Getty Images
Competition leaves the driving to robots
Someday in the future, every car might be like a taxi: Hop in, shout out a destination and sit back to enjoy the ride. Only the taxi driver will be a robot. That’s one potential outcome of the technology that teams of university and corporate researchers use in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s robotic vehicle races. DARPA, as the Pentagon agency is known, is interested in robotically driven vehicles for use on the battlefield as a way to put real people out of harm’s way. In this image, 2007 race winner, a roboticized Chevrolet Tahoe SUV, crosses the finish line to claim a $2 million check.
This past week several people asked me, “How are your other stores doing?”
I have to be honest with them and say 5 out of my 25 dealers had a month in May of ‘09 that was GREATER in units and profit than August of ‘08 – before this thing really went in the wrong direction. Business has picked up as the public is shifted into the seasonality of summer (which always brings out a greater percent of the buyers) and quite honestly people are getting more and more immune to the bad news.
So what is the problem???
INVENTORY
Just as some predicted… we are now going to be short.
The factory and distributor will tell you help is on the way, and we know it is, but that doesn’t help right now. You can’t fill a used car lot with inventory when every other dealer has people at the sales and auctions over bidding paying out of book for ‘05 & ‘06 product.
What you have to do is trade for these pieces and have solid buying practices in place.
You can even feel a little better about taking a no gross new car deal if you know there is gross in the used car.
This week, I was working with a service manager to create a bundled service package and he started talking about one of the most important fundamental elements in our business. It struck a nerve and made me want to write about it: It costs so much more money to GAIN a customer than it does to KEEP a customer.
The same principle is true whether you are selling Pizzas or Chevrolets; if you don’t take care of your customer someone else will. AND you must spend more to create a customer than you do to maintain a customer. Once you gain a customer, it is easier to retain a high level of satisfaction in their eyes by standing by your dealership, your brand and your people. Dealers argue over the difference in a good customer and a bad customer, but at the end of the day, they will all spend money with you.
Everyone will be fighting for your business and trying to steal your customers away from you.
That is the very foundation of my business and what Mike Strong built STRONG AUTOMOTIVE MERCHANDISING on in the last 3 decades: Creating traffic, stealing customers who intend to buy from one store and taking them to another.
In a tough economic market – these people can be the difference in profit and loss on your financial statement.
2 Ways you can REDUCE your spending on “3rd party lead providers”
and INCREASE qualified web traffic:
1) In the real estate business you hear, “Location, Location, Location!” – in the dealership online traffic business you hear, “GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE!” Take the money you are paying to AutoUSA or Autobytel and fire it right down the pipes of Google. You will see your paid search response and internet traffic increase. Ask anyone of Strong’s Dealersdoing SEM through Strong about the .85 – .90 Click-Thru Ratios they are getting.
2) Look at online buying sources – and the hot one of the week – zag.com. You pay them $299 a car and they send you as
many leads as they can ANDyou only pay for the ones that you sell. Let’s do the math on that: Give your salespeople customers to work with, and only pay the lead provider IF you sell the car. Sounds Like a Winner.
The latest fad in customer testimonial and avoiding getting “hate mailed to death” on the search engines is DealerRater.com. The site is growing in popularity and more and more dealers are listing it on their websites as a 3rd party piece to show customers they have received positive feedback from customers. While we know customer testimonials will work to help this, a cheap 3rd party endorsement that comes complete with something that looks like a health department rating doesn’t hurt either.
