Your right, I do work at a dealer, and I disagree with your statment. Actually, I pretty much disagree with everything you have said and believe your comments are based on bias and prejiduce against automotive dealerships in general. Since I actually work in the industry and see how things work on a DAILY BASIS, I stand by my orignal remark.

BTW

My store is getting 7. All will be sold before they hit the ground. Is that "plenty"?

 

Hmmm. Thats interesting. Really. The funny thing about that is, my local dealership has gotten 9 in already. That is nine. They don't even have enough room in the showroom for them all. And how many have they sold? ONE. Well, for a first shippment and only one gone, seems to me they are not as hot in my area as yours. They are asking 2500 over. Sold only one. Oh well, told them to call me when they want MSRP for one. We will see. I am in no rush, I can wait. Others can't, I understand that.

Seems my dealership has "plenty."

/<

PS. They also claim to be the largest volume dealershipin the nation, and have the little banner to prove it also.

 

That one they sold would happen to be white with a sunroof now would it?

<---- I went back in tonight with my blue car and left with a white one. I talked to the owner about some things and we worked out a deal.

Thanks for all the advice everyone, only time will tell to see if the production of 4500 holds true or not.

(edit: But it's not the "we're not getting any more after this" that sold me, it was after negotiating with the owner that I decided to buy)

 

I'm happy for you. I don't care if you're getting 700 and they're all sold.

Also Get it straight on numbers. said 4500 is their projected sales for the year, not the limit on how much they can make in a year. has said they will make as many as they can. The last estimate I recently heard they can produce is 6500 in a year. Production on this car is going to go all year long. You're the one who sounds ignorant to me.

I happen to have an uncle who is in the car sales business. I think he's a great salesman. He's honest and really puts customer service first. There are others like him. I also know for a fact (from him and from personal experience) that there are many people in car sales who use questionable tactics to generate sales. If you're trying to tell me that doesn't happen then you probably use them too.

I never made ANY generalizations in my comments here. All I said was generating a false sense of urgency is a common tactic used to make you feel like you "have" to buy the car now. I never said all car dealers are scum and you should rip them off.

BTW, many shoppers do everything they can to try and rip off dealers too (as I'm sure you know). I think that's lame too. I have no problems paying MSRP for a car. To me that's the fair price.

That's all I really have to say about the topic so you can rip away at me all you want. I could care less what you think of me personally, because I don't think much of you.

 

My dealer has already been able to order another Evo. This is an actual order, where they got to choose color and options.
The estimated date is in May to receive it.

 

The President of Mitsubishi North America announced 4,600 cars will be imported this year. Period. This numbe has been repeated and confirmed for me repeatedly by other Mitsubishi brass with whom I am in REGULAR CONTACT. This 6,500 nonsense is year-old rumors from "unnamed sources" that keep being regurgitated as fact. 6,500 still isn't a lot BTW. If that number were true it would maybe mean my store would see maybe 10-11 cars this year instead of 7. But we aren't getting 10-11 cars...

And since this seems to be a big deal to some, Barret Mitsu in Georgetown, TX was in fact the #1 Mitsu store in volume for 2002. 2,257 units RDR'd. That's huge. For comparison my store did somewhere around 650 units, enough to make us 2nd in our district and 7th or 8th in the region IIRC. We should have been closer to 750 units but... naw, I better not get into it.

 

Tear it up is right guys, we just ordered an EVO for our May allocation and they are actually letting us pick colors and options now. If you want a specific color that your dealer doesn't have coming in give them a call. Expect ship dates in mid to late May. By the way any favorites for colors??? I don't know for sure yet how many more we'll get to order but let me know if there is fav.

 

The last I read, (don't know if it was autoweek or not) the latest word on the supply was that Mitsubishi was going to build as many as they could sell. That was directly from corporate to the magazine.

Think about it for a second. When Subie comes out with the STi if Mitsu has no cars they will lose a ton of sales. Even if they don't make money off the Evo, it brings people into the Stealership.

BTW I used to work at a shop as a teenager about ten years ago. Back then we called them Much-too-****ties because every Mitsu that came in had a boatload of expensive problems. Hopefully that issue has been resolved. I own a Nissan now and can say firsthand that they have taken a huge step backwards in terms of quality/reliability.

 

The magazine in question was SCC from last month IIRC quoting an "unnamed source" from several months before that even (given publishing schedules) who was in turn probably just repeating the same old rumor the rest of us had been hearing for a year or more. I'd hardly call that credible.

BTW

You don't need to build a lot of cars to generate showfloor traffic.

 

Mark, it's a "big deal" I guess because that's who I happen to be dealing with and I started the thread. They claim their 8 are all they're getting, and that sounds low for the biggest dealer in the nation, that's all. To be fair they were getting 13 and sent 5 to one of their sister stores because it wasn't getting any.

It's also a big deal because there's another dealer in Austin that claims to be #1. I think if you listen closely they say "#1 in the city" or something, which is true since Georgetown is not Austin... but it's pretty darn close. And I had salesmen at both stores saying "we're #1" and that's it, no qualifiers or anyhing... so I didn't know who to believe.

I guess every dealership can be a #1 in some way, right?

 

13 is quite a bit for one store. If a sister store wasn't getting any that I would submit they may have a CSI problem. CSI is the real determiner of Evo allocations, not total sales.

The top 3 dealers in the nation in 2002 were all in Texas with #2 and 3 in Austin. The dealer that came in second was within less than 100 cars RDR'd IIRC. They may swap places from year to year if its that close so... Or, they may be rating themselves based on different criteria (monthly sales, CSI etc.).

 

Mark, I was surprised to hear that myself, that's what the guys at Barrett told me. I couldn't believe that central texas in particular was so big for Mitsu... I figured we'd be a big Ford, Chevy, Dodge, and GMC place given all the trucks and SUVs there are around here!

 

Texas is apparently huge for Mitsu (I am as surprised as anyone).

BTW

Just looked it up and Maxwell is currently ahead of last years winner Barret. Neither is at the absolute top of the charts at the moment though. That honor currently goes to Hernando Mits in Florida. Of course its too early in the year to make any conclusions and there are still four Texas dealers in the top 15.

 

guys,

I went to Dick Hannah Mitsubishi in Vancuver, WA to look at the EVO's when they first came in last weekend. They had 3 at the time Wht, Blk, Yel and said they were getting one more the next day. Asking $10,000 over retail. Well the cars are still sitting there today. The salesman called me yesterday and asked if I was still interested if they did one at MSRP. I think the dealers are starting to realize that they are in a very limited market for a $30,000 sports car. Sure the playstation generation would love to own one, its just that most kids can't swing a $500-$800 payment + insurance. I think if someone is really serious about buying an EVO they should not have much problem buying one at retail.