Automotive News NADA Show Daily - 2023 Day 3 - 44

44 * January 29, 2023
NADA DAILY: SUND AY
Kia leans into Super Bowl while others sit out
Vince Bond Jr.
vbond@crain.com
With the Super Bowl just two weeks away, Kia
stands alone as the only automaker that has
committed to running a commercial at this point.
The Korean brand, which has been a Super
Bowl staple, will highlight the popular three-row
Telluride. The utility vehicle has been freshened
for the 2023 model year.
Kia sees the Super Bowl stage as a key piece in
building awareness. It is pushing the Telluride
during the game because the company " increased
production in the [West Point, Ga.] plant,
starting in September, by 20 percent, so we need
to make sure we keep telling people to keep the
demand, " said Russell Wager, Kia America's vice
president of marketing.
The brand will start rolling out a sneak peek of
the Super Bowl campaign after Feb. 1.
Wager said Kia will continue to be aggressive
with its updated portfolio, which includes the
battery electric EV6, the freshened Telluride and
the redesigned fifth-generation Sportage.
Kia is riding momentum as it heads into the
game. The company's U.S. sales nearly broke
even in 2022, down just 1.1 percent, in a market
that declined by 8 percent as a whole.
Telluride deliveries were up 6.6 percent last
year and set a full-year sales record. The Sportage
and Sorento also achieved annual sales records
in 2022.
Eric Watson, Kia America's vice president of
'Putting dealers
first' is priority
for Maas in 2023
T
o Brian Maas, one of the most important issues
facing dealers this year is preserving the franchise
system, particularly as automakers try new
sales models.
Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association,
was chosen to be the 2023 Automotive Trade Association
Executives chairman, representing dealer association
leaders in states and metro regions across the U.S.
He offered input as NADA drafted a set of guiding principles
last year that highlight its position on changing
business models, from subscription services to vehicle
reservations.
Maas spoke with Staff Reporter Lindsay VanHulle about
his top priorities as the association's chairman. Here are
edited excerpts.
Q: What big issues are on the horizon for dealers?
A:
As OEMs, starting with Ford and the Model e program,
seek new opportunities to change the retail experience,
that's concerning to dealers we represent. ATAEs all
across the country want to make sure
that the OEMs are putting dealers first.
What types of issues will come
to the forefront?
We want to make sure dealers reQA&
BRIAN
MAAS
main
primary in the sales process and
the relationship with consumers.
That's not to say that Ford can't have a
relationship with the consumer - of
course they do. They communicate about
product offerings and whether there's a
recall or whatever might happen. But
the consumer is going to go to the dealer
if there's an issue. So when OEMs try
and do an agency model, or a subscription
or an over-the-air update later in the process that you
have to subscribe to, those are all things that affect both
dealers and consumers.
How do you expect these issues to play out?
Most legislative bodies are in session this year, so a lot of
my counterparts are thinking of making changes to their
franchise laws. And as I like to tell the OEM representatives
in California,
if you guys treated the dealers well, we
wouldn't have to go to the legislature and ask for help to
protect dealers and consumers. But because you push the
envelope, we often have to do these rules. So I expect a lot of
that activity. One of the messages I hope to convey during
my term is to communicate early with the ATAEs. And I
think the Model e program is a good template for that.
Will NADA's guiding principles be used to start?
We want to be partners with the OEMs. It shouldn't be
an antagonistic relationship. It only becomes antagonistic
when the OEMs push the envelope too far. If they understand
what our guiding principles represent, they can anticipate
where we're going to go and where the pressure
points are going to be. And I think that's helpful for the
whole ecosystem, because our dealers can't be successful
if they're not working in cooperation with the OEMs that
provide 100 percent of the new-car inventory. m
Subaru upbeat on sales, next-gen Outback
Larry P. Vellequette
lvellequette@crain.com
Subaru executives told dealers Saturday
that they can expect at least some relief from
crazy tight inventory levels in the coming
year as production levels increase. And they
said the brand should see higher year-overyear
sales as a result.
Tom Doll, CEO of Subaru of America, told
Automotive News after the brand's make
meeting that Subaru is forecasting a roughly
8 percent gain to 600,000 sales in 2023 as
production constraints ease. Subaru sold
556,581 vehicles in the U.S. in 2022 and last
topped 600,000 in 2020.
" There's still very strong demand out there, "
Doll said, adding that Subaru dealers had done
a good job managing consumer expectations
through the industry's supply shortages.
Dealers also got a " peek behind the curtain "
at the next-generation Outback midsize
crossover, which is due to arrive in the
U.S. in 2025, said Jeff Williams, owner of Williams
Subaru in Lansing, Mich.
" That's the most excited I've been about a
vehicle heading here in a long time, " said
Williams, who declined to reveal any specifics
about it. " I will say that [Subaru engineers
and designers] seemed to have addressed
every issue that we've brought up with the
Outback. They really seemed like they listened
to us, and that gives me confidence in
how the next-generation Outback is going to
perform in the marketplace. "
Williams predicted that if production constraints
fade away by the redesigned vehicle's
introduction, the Outback will return to
its perch as Subaru's top-selling model. Last
year, the Crosstrek subcompact crossover
was the brand's top seller in the U.S., while
the Forester compact crossover finished just
ahead of the Outback in 2021. a
Celebrating young retail leaders
Many members of Automotive News' 40 Under 40 class of 2022 were
honored at the Automotive News Retail Forum: NADA on Thursday.
Respecting customers' time will
increase loyalty, panelists say
Larry P. Vellequette
lvellequette@crain.com
Keeping customers loyal and coming back
to a dealership has as much to do with their
purchasing and service experiences as with
vehicle design or technology advances, a panel
of industry loyalty experts said Thursday.
To win repeat business, it's imperative to
focus on making purchasing and service
easier and more transparent, said a panel of
executives from different parts of the retail
business at the J.D. Power Auto Summit.
Barb Edson, chief marketing officer at CDK
Global, said her company is finding that the
longer it takes to go through a buying process,
whether for a used car or a new car, the
worse the store's Net Promoter Score is. A Net
Promoter Score is a measurement of customer
loyalty gleaned by asking consumers, on a
scale of 1 to 10, how much they would recommend
a business to someone else.
Edson also said there is a direct
correlation between the time a consumer
spends waiting to get into an
F&I office on a busy day and their
future loyalty to that dealership.
She urged dealers to embrace technologies
that allow consumers to
electronically monitor service progress.
A slide bar that tracks the vehicle's
progress makes consumers feel
more confident about their interactions
- and more likely to return.
Jonathan Jordan, director of retail strategy at
virtual capabilities across multiple locations to
help speed consumers through F&I.
" In a dealer group situation, oftentimes I've
got one store that's really busy and
another that's not, so I've got an F&I
manager who's underutilized and
one that's got four customers waiting
at the office, " Jordan said. By using
remote technologies, F&I managers
located elsewhere can finish
the process quicker.
Jordan said that in the current
Edson: Watch
waits for F&I
JM&A Group, agreed that time waiting for F&I
is detrimental to loyalty. He said JM&A is using
lease -buyback environment where
consumers are largely choosing to
buy out their leases, it's important
to give lease returnees " a good suite of protection
products that would tie that customer
back to the dealership. " e
The Telluride will star in Kia's Super Bowl ad.
sales operations, said it's been 3½ years since Kia
launched the Telluride, but " we still have a waitlist
at every dealer for customers waiting for that
vehicle to come in. Probably our most popular
product in our lineup. "
Kia sees this as a time to keep grabbing consumer
attention while other manufacturers sit
out the Super Bowl.
" We're not taking our foot off the accelerator, "
Wager told Automotive News. " We've got growth
plans. We're also going into our first full year of
Sportage, our first full year of EV6, our first full
year of the new 2023 Telluride. We've got a lot of
stories to tell. And with that, we've got to tell a lot
more people if we want to achieve our growth. So
we're happy that everyone else is deciding to
slow down a little bit - we have no plans to do
that. " n
LAWRENCE JENKINS
Automotive News NADA Show Daily - 2023 Day 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News NADA Show Daily - 2023 Day 3
