Many dealerships continue to struggle with inventory issues and for the owners of the Alfa Romeo and Maserati of Ontario dealer in California, that prompted them to think outside the box.
Last year, the dealership sold 158 new vehicles and 42 used vehicles and routinely encountered inventory shortages from the middle of the year.
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“Just being … the limited-volume brands that they are, you don’t really have a whole lot of access to used cars,” the dealership’s director of operations Brandon Goodermont told Auto News. “The used cars have been really, really minimal. All of a sudden 40 cars will show up, and we’re covered for the next 60 to 75 days. And then all of a sudden, we’ve sold down to five or six, and we’ll sit on those until the next 45 show up.”
To ensure the dealerships could remain open when its supply of new Alfa Romeo and Maserati models had dried up, the store started to purchase used exotic and off-brand vehicles and has been selling them to great success.
According to Goodermont, the dealership has purchased a wide array of exotics in recent months, including a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder, a 2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed, and a 1963 Maserati 3500 GT Sebring. It has also purchased and sold many Lamborghini models, noting that these are its “highest-volume turner.”
“We recognized a hole in our market where we’re located in Southern California, as one of the exotics retailers struggled through COVID,” Goodermont said. “It opened up an opportunity for us and, in recognizing that, we made a move into the space just to see if there was an opportunity to take advantage of and supplement some sales with some higher margin.”
The strategy has proven to be so successful that exotic car owners are now reaching out to the dealership to see if the store is interesting in buying them. Goodermont added that “there’s considerable margin” when selling exotics.
