Shitty Hyundai Dealers In Texas

If you go into the way-back machine, Hyundai/Kia really struggled to sign up dealers. Unknown brand, low prices but low margins. Those willing to take a risk looked at it as 1/2 step above a used car lot. So same mentality - minimum investment in showroom & service area, poor pay so mostly everyone on the lot new to car sales, etc. Suzuki & some others in same boat. Hyundai/Kia made huge strides with heavy backing from their government. Probably 15 years ago outran their dealer network in customer perception but are still stuck with many that operate as they did in the early days.

 

Recently went and tried to buy a car myself. Honda was kind hilarious when I pulled up the salesmen outside without hesitation told me the Type R is a $20k mark up, no ETAs, they will take a deposit but you will take whatever color comes in.

Toyota was in the ball park of $10k-$15k up on the Supra, $5k-$10k up on the GR 86 and basically no news at all on the GR Corolla. I expect the GR Corolla to be just like the Type R for around the next few years.

Nissan I was kinda interested in the new Z but its been endlessly delayed, some are coming now but my enthusiasm has gotten more meh on it as time goes by.

Acura I was kinda intrigued by the Integra to stop by but its been a wonderful experiencing so far of getting ghosted plus their Honda neighbor one block over, I passed.

If you want to have some fun, check out the mark ups round the country:
https://markups.org/

Ultimately copped a 2022 WRX from Subaru since they had stock, sold it MSRP. Wanted to tack on like $4k of addons but got that knocked down and left with a car basically same day.

Dealership experience is pain, they are having one last hurrah now since they can continue to exploit the market before most companies switch from ICE to EVs and to selling direct. In the past year, I been to showrooms for Tesla, Lucid, Polestar, and even Cadillac showing off the Lyriq at the mall yesterday.

Car companies are seeing the writing the walls themselves, they probably hate/love dealership networks themselves. But what they do like is laws changing to allow for DTC to help fatten up their profit margins.

GPUs from late 2020 to early 2022 were scalped hard, crypto prices and mining were going ham, Nvidia was making money hand over fist. Then they got greedy, made SKUs that were terrible value for consumers but great for Nvidia profits. Now their partners are sitting on tons of cards, the crypto winter is here, and Nvidia is about to launch their new cards that is going to sit on shelves.

Don't think it will be as bad as this for car companies with as many parts it takes to make a car vs a GPU. But it ain't a stretch to see things getting over corrected and suddenly car companies have a glut of chips considering same thing happened after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Affected production, companies started hoarding and ordering excess chips, slowdown isn't as bad as predicted, companies cancel orders and the fabs have too many chips now.

 

With some of the captive lenders, yes on really high value vehicles/loaners with super prime credit. Most of the 0% offers I'm seeing are still in the 48-60 month world, but not everyone can afford the payments so they are now hitting the 84 month loans with interest. If your credit is really good, you can row in that $10k negative equity into your next deal.

 

Not our jobs to teach people how financing really works. Buyers beware.

 

Damn straight. This country was built on usury and the military industrial complex!

Seriously, I'd go all Bernie Sanders on this stuff if I thought for one second that the Sanders crowd would actually make a rational and and positive change.

 

Yeah its pretty nuts, within a 10 mile radius of me, middle of SGV there was like 2 GR86 in stock.

Last year was kinda nutty for used cars. Friend put in the info for his 2013 FRS he bought in 2016 for $16k or something, CarMax offered him $16k. I put in the info for my 2017 Rogue and got offered $24k, like $3k less than sticker on a 4 year old car. Traded it in to help with the WRX and got $16k for it from the dealer last month and they listed it for $20k.

I was looking at used car auction sites like Carsandbid as a curiosity this year but saw on Twitter Doug talking about how much used market has fallen:
https://twitter.com/DougDeMuro/status/1545007821116293120

Used car bubble market has finally burst, and things are falling now.

Friend did show me this few months back of how dumb some people are when buying a car:
https://imgur.com/gBDBvxj

 

Just to let you know that I rub your money on my nipples.

People hate to read and/or still don't understand what they are signing. As I always tell people: You don't have to sign that Retail Installment Contract.

Sounds normal to me with people getting into bad contracts without understand the real cost of things (even if it is in the contract).

 

Friend knows a guy, was about to sell his F150 Raptor to his dealer after not even owning it too long for like $3k less than sticker earlier this year.

Had everything ready, and was about to trade it in but then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the next day the dealer called and rescinded their offer.

Gas prices go to the moon.

 

Some of the times I nod or smile when I hear Bernie Sanders speak.
Some of the times I see dumb stuff like these pictures and want Bernie Sanders ejected from office.

Contrary to what @YMO thinks I do though, most of the times I just go and do something more worthwhile... like watching him play with crenca's money

 

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@YMO counting @crenca's money per @penguins wet dream fantasy.

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It is what you think it is

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Hot Stuff

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GM wants to convert Buick dealers to direct-to-consumer

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/gm-...-dealers-that-dont-want-to-invest-in-evs.html

 

The most shocking thing about that story is that people are still buying and selling Buicks.

 

Not going to lie, their Regal Wagon that they recently stop selling was cool as f**k.

 

Buick is big in China. GM sold 2.9 million vehicles in China in 2021, with over 800,000 being Buick.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2022/02/gm-china-sales-figures-numbers-results-2021-calendar-year/
China is GM's largest market and they have been selling more in China than the US since 2012. GM has factories there with a Chinese partner.