McLEAN, Va. -

When William Underriner talked with Auto Remarketing late last year prior to officially taking the helm as chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, one of the goals he emphasized dealt with NADA taking a hard look at the factory image programs that have been spurring debate among dealers.

Now a few months into his chairmanship, Underriner unveiled four new measures the association is taking to accelerate its examination into the facilities upgrade program.
 

In an AutoFocus video interview conducted by NADA vice president of public affairs David Hyatt, Underriner said: “Dealers today are spending billions of dollars putting up new facilities complying with the manufacturers. And the manufacturers can’t tell the dealers whether their investment will help them sell one more car.”

So, step one in NADA’s mission to further investigate will be to have industry consultant Glenn Mercer facilitate talks with accounting firms to help determine dealer return on investment from these facility programs. Mercer, of course, headed up the initial study last fall to examine these programs.

“We’re going to look at some of the large accounting firms that only do accounting business for dealers, and see what their data bank has to say about the return on investment when a dealer didn’t build a new facility or when a dealer did build a new facility,” Underriner explained in the video.

Step two will be to add questions about the facility programs to the already existing Dealer Attitude Survey coming up this summer and then present those results to automaker executives sometime in September or October. As such, OEM executives will get a picture of how their respective dealers feel about their individual program.

Third on the list is what’s essentially an annual review — or “report card,” as Underriner put it — NADA has in store that acts as a one-year follow-up to Mercer’s study from last year.

Lastly, NADA plans to look at the “dealership of the future” to project what a store may look like down the road based on the needs of the customer.

The video from NADA’s website can be viewed here.