Dealership Gallery
Prime Cars. Prime Cars. We believe that taking care of our customers and selling top-quality cars is important. We are happy to assist you in finding your next car. Car dealerships are usually franchised to sell and service vehicles by specific companies. They are often located on properties offering enough room to have buildings housing a showroom, mechanical service, and body repair facilities, as well as to provide storage for used and new vehicles. Many dealerships are located out of town or on the edge of town centers. An example of a traditional single proprietorship car dealership was Collier Motors in North Carolina.
Most automotive manufacturers have shifted the focus of their franchised retailers to branding and technology. New or refurbished facilities are required to have a standard look for their dealerships and have product experts to liaise with customers.
Tesla Motors has rejected the dealership sales model based on the idea that dealerships do not properly explain the advantages of their cars, and they could not rely on third-party dealerships to handle their sales. However, in the United States, direct manufacturer auto sales are prohibited in almost every state by franchise laws requiring that new cars be sold only by dealers.
Additionally, the issuance of new dealership licenses is subject to geographical restriction; if there is already a dealership for a company in an area, no one else can open one. This has led to dealerships becoming in essence hereditary, with families running dealerships in an area since the original issuance of their license with no fear of competition or any need to prove qualification or consumer benefit (beyond proving they meet minimum legal standards), as franchises in most jurisdictions can only be withdrawn for illegal activity and no other reason. Auto transport is used to move vehicles from the factory to the dealerships. This includes international and domestic shipping. It was largely a commercial activity conducted by manufacturers, dealers, and brokers. Internet use has encouraged this niche service to expand and reach the general consumer marketplace. But as cars improved and more were built, automakers needed more than just customers occasionally stopping by. Retailers saw an opportunity for profit as well. It’s believed the first carmaker to sell through a franchised dealer was Winton, which switched from making bicycles to producing single-cylinder, wooden-framed cars in Cleveland, Ohio in 1897. New production methods increased the output. The 1901 Oldsmobile Curved Dash is considered the first mass-produced car, built on a rudimentary assembly line. In 1913, Henry Ford started full production on a moving line that truly accelerated the process, allowing him to turn out more than a million cars in one year at the height of his Model T’s popularity. All these cars changed the way people got around, along with the way cars were sold. The first sales agents took the customer’s order, forwarded it to the automaker, and waited for the car to arrive. Now, with hundreds of thousands of cars rolling out of their factories, the big automakers set up networks of franchised dealers and shipped straight to them. The cars went to customers if they’d been previously ordered, and if not, into the dealer’s inventory. That caused problems for many dealers, who didn’t have the cash to pay for them. In 1919, General Motors was one of the first to open a financing branch to cover dealers for their inventory. The dealer paid interest while the car sat on the lot, and paid out the loan when a customer bought it – as it’s still done today. This was done almost exclusively for dealers, but when private financing companies opened their doors to consumer car loans, the automakers extended theirs to customers as well. In the auto’s infancy, dealers did more than just sell cars. Many customers were coming straight from horses, and salespeople often had to teach them how to drive. Some dealerships sold gasoline, since stations were rare and most drivers bought it from hardware stores or pharmacies. And after a few years, dealers faced something they’d not seen before: the used car. There was a bit of a learning curve to pricing them so they’d appeal to buyers, but not cut too deeply into new-car sales. Dealership Gallery. Gallery. Gallery.
