Skip to main content

Used Vehicle Pop Quiz: Why Is One Dealer Doing So Much Worse?

Take a moment to review the following used vehicle inventory-level metrics from two similarly sized and geographically located dealer groups. Then, I’d welcome your answer to the quiz question below.

Inventory Market Days Supply

Dealer group 1: 85
Dealer group 2: 73

Cost To Market

Dealer group 1: 90 percent
Dealer group 2: 84 percent

Price To Market

Dealer group 1: 94 percent
Dealer group 2: 95 percent

Inventory Age

Dealer group 1: 40 percent under 30 days; 33 percent over 60 days
Dealer group 2: 65 percent under 30 days; 7 percent over 60 days

Annualized Inventory Turn

Dealer group 1: 7x
Dealer group 2: 14x

It should be clear from these metrics that Dealer Group 2 is doing a better job selling more cars and making more money on a per-car basis.

The question: Given the information here, what would you suspect as the root cause of Dealer Group’s 1 less-than-optimal performance?

Please share your answer in the comments below. I look forward to a lively discussion and sharing the right answer in an upcoming post. Thank you for your participation!

The post Used Vehicle Pop Quiz: Why Is One Dealer Doing So Much Worse? appeared first on Dale Pollak.

About the Author

Dale Pollak serves as executive vice president for Cox Automotive, a position he’s held since the company he founded, vAuto, became part of the Cox family in 2010. At Cox, Dale helps drive integrated innovation across the company’s auction, media and software divisions to help dealers increase efficiencies, sales volumes and profitability. The latest innovation, ProfitTime GPS, debuted in 2021 and helps dealers move beyond Velocity to a Variable Management strategy for optimizing the ROI for their used vehicle investments. The innovation, built on the breadth and depth of inventory data science at Cox Automotive, extends vAuto as the premier inventory management solution provider for franchise and independent dealers, serving more than 14,000 dealers. Dale has authored six books that showcase his perspective and thought leadership for the retail automotive industry. He published his latest book, “Whole Truth: A Fresh, Money-Making Method for Wholesale, the Most Misunderstood Side of Your Business,” in 2022.

Profile Photo of Dale Pollak