Dealers alert to strike impact on showroom, service

Because the strike is in its early days, new-vehicle inventory levels remain stable, dealers told Automotive News.

Kunes said there is a “fair amount” of GM, Ford and Stellantis inventory available.

“For those three manufacturers, I think, the most troublesome one would be GM, as they had the least amount of inventory on the ground and some of their more popular models such as the [Chevrolet] Tahoe have very low supply of inventory,” he said.

A lapse in production of the popular sixth-generation Ford Bronco could pose a problem for Ford dealers because those vehicles have only been out since 2021.

“These are already short-supply vehicles; you feel that much quicker,” Ford dealer Richard Bazzy, who owns three Shults Ford locations in the Pittsburgh area, said of the Bronco and Ranger pickup. “I’ll start to feel this in about two to three weeks.”

LaFontaine Automotive Group, of Highland, Mich., began stockpiling vehicle inventory over the past 90 days — “literally taking every unit available from the automakers,” spokesperson Max Muncey told Automotive News on Sept. 15.

Going into the strike, at least one affected automaker, Stellantis, had an oversupply of certain inventory, Fowler Holding’s Fowler said.

“In the short term, we’re gonna have [Jeep] Gladiators,” he said. “That’s something that we will have supply [of] to get us through a prolonged period of time.”

Travaline said his dealership has been sourcing vehicles through third parties.

“Some dealers in the Northeast are trading some cars,” he said. “Chrysler also has the ability to find some cars through virtual inventory.”

David Whiston, an analyst with Morningstar in Chicago, strongly pushed back against the narrative that the strike is a good thing for dealerships because vehicle inventory is too bloated.

According to Whiston, the overall U.S. light-vehicle inventory levels for each of the Detroit 3 on a combined basis at the end of August were 39 percent lower vs. the end of August 2019 — just before the UAW strike against GM that year.

“I’m sure you might find one or two dealers somewhere who will be willing to say they had too much of X company’s inventory,” Whiston told Automotive News. “But I think broadly speaking, no, this is not good because the industry is coming out of a massive supply chain disruption with the pandemic and the chip shortage.”