The car business is taking a bath almost everywhere.  Almost all Dealer’s, Vendors and OEM’s suffering.   The big three is seeking welfare, stores are closing daily and vendors are losing customers at alarming rates.   It looks like the demise of many is in the works.  Almost!!

Dealerships and vendors have a chance if they are not deeply tied to status quo.  Actually many dealers and vendors are thriving in this down cylce, the big three has a chance if they can change their thinking.  What has happend is much like old Wile E Coyote running over the side of a cliff.  His legs keep spinning trying to push forward with all the momentum he has built through his misguded efforts to finally realize there is nothing under his feet but air and all of his hard work has failed him.

This penomenom is happening in all aspect of the car business right now at all levels.  Dealers that have relied on their years of establishment to carry them through are closing their doors, big vendors are being dropped like hot potatoes and the OEM’s are stiffing thier dealers.

The problem does not lie in the economy and the solution is not in a bail out.  The problem lies in companies not realizing the world around them is changing and not adapting to it.  Thinking that they are untouchable and their name and past successes will cary them through.  They are falling off the cliff that Seth Godin talks about in his book “The Dip”.  They waited to long to quit and move into today’s market.

As efforts and results moved up they did not realize that the market around them was changing and they have waited to long to change themselves and hit bottom quickly like the “Super Genius and Mastermind of Possibilities” bound for failure and could not see it until the canyon floor it them in the face.

The ones that are making it right now are working through the proverbial dip.  Things are tight and the cause looks dismal but the light is shinning and wild success is around the corner.  It will be at the expense of the ones that refuse to adapt.

Casualties will come to the big online vendors that have done nothing to improve their products since their inception.  They will be replaced by the little guys they have been scoffing at for the last few years who really understand what it takes to build a site that converts, float bricks in the search engines and grasp the intricacies of long tail marketing.

Dealers who refuse to step in sync with consumers will be left in the dust by those that do.  The dealers who don’t list or give customers prices online, those that do not really leverage the web, the ones who put the customer through eight turns before slamming them into the box, the ones that think rate and payment should be a huge secret.  The same dealers who said the stores that were doing/not doing these things are idiots and will never make it and are destroying “their” market, by giving consumers what they wanted will wind up on the chopping block

The big three not so sure there is much hope for them.  High labor cost, crappy vehicles, stiffing dealers, unfair franchise agreements it is a wonder that they made it this long.  Their legs have been running a hundred miles an hour mid air for quite sometime and the end is near.

The small vendors, the dealers that are in sync and small manufacturers with good products are going to win.  They are working through the dip and will own their respective markets.  The big boys do not stand a chance.  They will be like a bear getting attacked by an army of midgets.  Unless they can make drastic changes to their offerings.

The darkest is before the dawn and working through the dip will pay off.  What is bad it just may be too late for the big boys to catch up now.

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