Automotive News - January 14, 2008 - (Page 38) 38 • JANUARY 14, 2008 ISUZU Product lacking, but dealers signing up continued from Page 4 Still falling The long slide of Isuzu’s U.S. passenger-vehicle sales 2007 7,098 2006 8,614 12,177 2005 2004 27,188 2003 30,328 2002 52,992 2001 82,380 2000 98,066 1999 103,937 Source: Automotive News Data Center Nine of the 13 new franchise holders are in the South, including one run by Joe Falk, owner of Little Joe’s Isuzu in Chesapeake, Va. Low admission price Falk, a used-vehicle dealer, acquired his Isuzu store in November 2006 from a group that wanted to unload both Isuzu and Mitsubishi. He said the Isuzu franchise was an opportunity to gain traction in the new-car market. “We’ve been in the used car-business for 35 years, and we were losing too many of our customers to newcar guys because of easy credit,” Falk said. “We needed to compete.” He says his initial investment was reasonable. “Under $1 million,” he said, including the 50 Isuzu vehicles he had to buy up front. Since opening the store, Falk said he has sold about 115 vehicles. J.D. Tomlinson, owner of Tomlinson Motor Co., a used-car store in Gainesville, Fla., sells about 70 used vehicles a month, mostly 2006 models and newer. He got his Isuzu franchise last September from a dealer who had Isuzu dualed with Pontiac-GMC. The interest is from used-car stores seeking to become new-vehicle dealers, as well as dealerships eager to add Isuzu service business — all without a huge investment. Some dealers also are eager to add Isuzu’s pickups and mid-sized SUV to their car offerings. “They were basically pushing GMC,” Tomlinson says. “Isuzu needs somebody like me; somebody who will push Isuzu.” Although Tomlinson has been selling only four to five new Isuzus a month, he relishes new-car status. It can mean better financing opportunities and better treatment at auctions, even with a sinking brand like Isuzu. “Generally speaking, a new-car dealer is looked at more favorably,” says Tomlinson, who spent less than $100,000 for his franchise, not including the initial allocation of 30 vehicles. “And it gives you something to offer other than used cars. Who’s interested “The company is signing up new dealers, and some are outselling me,” said John Galeani, an Isuzu dealer since 1988. Galeani, head of the Isuzu dealer council and owner of City Isuzu in Jacksonville, Fla., once sold 100 new Isuzus a month. These days he is selling about 12 a month. The new dealers are coming on board despite a product lineup that consists of only the five-seat Ascender SUV, based on the Chevrolet TrailBlazer and the i-series pickup, derived from GM’s small pickup platform. “The limited product is our biggest concern,” Galeani says. “We are selling only two rebadged GM vehicles, and there is no new news on the horizon for any new product. It’s a serious issue.” As Isuzu’s overall dealer count falls, sales do, too. Isuzu’s 201 dealers sold 7,098 vehicles in 2007, a 17.6 percent decline from 2006, when the company had 227 dealers. Nice niche Not all of the new owners come from the used-vehicle market. Jeremy Franklin and Jim Shorkey, both Suzuki dealers, acquired Isuzu franchises because they say Isuzu’s trucks are nifty additions to their Suzuki car lineup. They say the service business is an added bonus. Franklin is dualing the Isuzu store with one of his two Suzuki stores in Kansas City, Mo. He said the investment was about $50,000, excluding the 45 new vehicles he bought. The store opened last October. “Sales are marginal, but you can’t even buy a house in Missouri for $50,000,” Franklin says. “Come April 1, we will have paid for our investment just from service. “And even if they don’t bring in any new product, with the current product we sell, we’ll still have the warranty work for seven years.” Shorkey spent about $125,000 for his Isuzu franchise and to renovate a dedicated showroom for Isuzu at his Suzuki store near Pittsburgh. He is already reaping benefits. Shorkey says he services three or four Isuzus daily and has sold about 90 vehicles since opening the store last April. “It’s a nice niche for us,” he says. “I think from here they’re going to grow.” But can these new Isuzu retailers grow without new product? “I talk with (Terry Maloney, president of Isuzu Motors America) frequently,” Galeani says. “The answer is he can tell us nothing is coming. “But I applaud the manufacturer for telling us the truth. There’s nothing worse then getting a lot of baloney.”c TATA How the $2,500 car became a reality continued from Page 3 GIZMOS Show exhibits GPS — and the gee-whiz continued from Page 3 took the challenge and said ‘yes, we’ll do it.’ ” Bosch won several major contracts by redesigning mature technologies into new products that are smaller, lighter and less complex, said Ninan Philip, deputy general manager of Bosch Mico Motor Industries in Bangalore, India. For example, Bosch’s 35-amp generator for the Nano weighs about 12 pounds, slightly smaller than the normal 40-amp, 13-pound model. Bosch also adapted a motorcycle starter motor for the Nano to save more weight, said Sanjay Khatri, Bosch senior sales manager. And Bosch didn’t just remove 700 of the 1,000 functions of its European-market engine control module; it shrank the electronic chip and its housing. The German supplier also redesigned sensors to reduce size and weight. The redesigned throttle-position sensor can be half the size because Bosch substituted a more sensitive material in the pressure plate. By reducing the weight to 1,278 pounds for the base Nano, the car needs less equipment to operate, said Wagh. The engine can have two cylinders instead of three or four. The approach works elsewhere, too. Small 65R12 tires and wheels use less material. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTO Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata stands next to the Tata Nano last week at the Auto Expo in New Delhi. Supplier involvement early in the design process helped Tata Motors find the cost savings to hit the $2,500 price target. Tata may bypass dealers and sell cars directly to buyers. Instead of shipping finished cars to dealers, it would ship kits of mostly assembled modules to satellite minifactories that would complete assembly. Buyers would pick up the cars at the factory gate. the project. For example, Tata may bypass dealers and sell cars directly to buyers, to reduce logistics costs. Instead of shipping finished cars to dealers, it would ship kits of mostly assembled modules to satellite minifactories that would complete assembly. Buyers would pick up the cars at the factory gate. Tata picked an undeveloped state in eastern India to build the Nano plant. The West Bengal regional government streamlined the construction process for the Singur site and leased the site to Tata for free. The Nano will go on sale in India this year. Initial capacity will be 250,000 units annually, but Tata is considering export to countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe. Nano suppliers say they have been told to prepare for India production capacity in incremental stages of up to 500,000 — and up to 500,000 more for global markets. Ratan Tata acknowledged last week that he sometimes doubted the automaker would hit its price target or Teeny Tata How tiny is Tata’s new Nano? Here are the numbers. Length: 122.1 in. Width: 59.1 in. Height: 63.0 in. Seats: 5 Engine: 2-cylinder, 624cc Horsepower: 33 Top speed: 64 mph Fuel economy: 50 mpg Curb weight: 1,278 lbs. Early involvement Suppliers got involved early. Rico, an Indian engine-block and cylinderhead caster, advised Tata even before the project team decided whether the Nano’s base engine would be two or three cylinders. “The range was from 550cc to 750cc,” said Vikas Saxena, Rico’s assistant general manager for business development and project management. “So when the answer was 624cc, it was a very close decision on how many cylinders to use.” Other cost-saving ideas went into timetable. But he challenged a journalist’s reference to Tata’s “1 lakh” price promise. “I never made that promise; the media did,” he said, recounting how his low-cost car project became the “1-lakh car” only after a headline writer called it that. “But I kept the name as a way to challenge us.”c The Long-Range Bi-directional Key Fob Vehicle Access System from Delphi Corp. informs the driver about the status of various functions in the car from as far away as 1 kilometer (less from inside buildings). It can lock and unlock doors, start the vehicle, arm the alarm and get information such as engine and battery status. Delphi also showed a modified iPhone that turns the cell phone into a key fob of sorts. It can start the car remotely or run remote diagnostics. C3, a similar cell phone remote system from AutoPage in Torrance, Calif., also can notify parents when teen drivers exceed a set speed limit. Autonet Mobile, of Marin County, Calif., has developed a wireless broadband network that turns any car into a rolling Internet Wi-Fi hot spot. Three California dealerships have signed on to have the system installed in vehicles, and Avis Rent A Car System LLC offers it as Avis Connect in about a dozen major airports. HD radios from Ibiquity Digital Corp., of Columbia, Md., offer iTunes Tagging. It is coming soon to cars. Push a button when you hear a song you like on the radio, and that bookmarks the song for downloading the next time you log on to Apple iTunes. Visteon Corp. and the 3M Automotive Market Center, both of suburban Detroit, packed their innovations into a BMW X5 demonstration Vehicle. The highlight was a curved, ultrathin instrument panel that replaces traditional gauges with a touch-screen surface that turns black when not in use. Another understated cool feature: a backlit license plate holder. Cops don’t have to be the only ones with dashboard cameras. A driving recording system from Hyundai Autonet of South Korea continually records. If you’re in an accident, you’ll have a record of what happened 30 seconds before and after th
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