A glut of car dealerships

[jeffandnicole]

They (the dealerships) didn't necessarily care what brand of new cars they were selling; they just wanted the customers.

Much the same reason how a salesperson at a dealership will go about trying to sell you a new car.  After going on and on about how great the car brand is, the customer decides he doesn't want to spend for a new car, but sets his sights on a used car on the lot of a different brand.  The salesperson will then go on and on about how great that brand is as well.

[JMoses24]

In the Cincinnati area there are 2 major conglomerations of new car dealers.

Kerry: Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Nissan, Volkswagen, Scion, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, and Mazda.
Jeff Wyler: Just about all of the above except Mitsubishi and Ford. Also Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Honda, and Cadillac.

[SP Cook]

The only non-zillionaire car brand that isn't found in my general area is Infiniti.  Porsche, if you consider it non-zillionaire, recently left the market as the dealer could not sell enough any more to justify the investment in a repair set ut for all the odd-ball mechanicals.

There are several dealerships out in the country that carry all three so-called "American" brands.    I don't get that.

One thing I remember from the old days is that there were some brands that were sold as almost a sideline by repair shops or even just gas stations.  IH, which made a proto-SUV called a Scout was mostly like that.  The dealer was just a gas station who had a couple of new Scout and an order book.  Pre-AMC Jeeps were sometimes like that, as were some now-full line so-called "Japanese" brand, back when they just made one model or two.  It also wasn't unusual to see an "American" dealer flesh out his offerings by adding a "Japanese" line back when the "Big 3" really did not make valid small cars 

Two oddballs around here used to be that Huntington had a camper-RV-boat dealer who also Hondas back in the day when they only made Civics.   Sold off the Honda dealership in the early 80s when Honda got a broader lineup.  Until Mopar invested in a new truck design in the early 90s and was thus selling trucks that were practically identical to the ones it sold in the 1960s and thus non-competitive with Chevy and Ford, our local Mopar outlet was Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge-GMC.

Slightly OT, but we have a local dealer that is Volvo-Mercedes Benz-Land Rover-Jaguar.  One building with three entrances.  One for LR/Jaguar, one for Volvo, one for M-B.   No connection between the different show rooms on the first (public) floor.  A customer has to go outside to move between showrooms, while the offices are upstairs and the workers can go down which ever staircase they want since the building connects upstairs.  This is because M-B and Jaguar do not allow their cars to be in showrooms other brands.

[Gnutella]

In the Pittsburgh area are five "#1 Cochran" dealerships, and they all seem to have different brands across all different automakers. In the eastern suburbs (the original location in Monroeville), they sell Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Subaru, Hyundai and Fiat. In the southern suburbs (Dormont), they sell Volkswagen, Nissan, Infiniti and Hyundai. In the western suburbs (Robinson Township), they sell Buick, GMC and Kia. In the northern suburbs (Pine Township), they sell Volkswagen, Mazda and Infiniti. Up the Allegheny River Valley (Natrona Heights), they sell Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Ford.