TO THE EDITOR:
Regarding “From a distant corner, a harbinger of good times for the auto industry,” autonews.com, Dec. 4: Unfortunately, tooling orders are not a good harbinger for the industry. From a manufacturer perspective, the industry is moving to a state of retooling for new products, just as it has for decades. All manufacturers retool annually for new products, and the next five to 25 years will not be any different, except that they will be doing more retooling in the next five to 10 years due to the evolution of electric products.
The demand for vehicle production by dealers has been greater than the supply since March 2020. Consumer demand is diminishing to where it is now less than what the manufacturers are beginning to produce, with chip supplies starting to become somewhat more available.
As manufacturers build more vehicles for their dealers, consumer demand is going to force dealers to order fewer and fewer, as our stockpiles of inventory replenish to acceptable levels.
The best thing to come out of the pandemic for dealers is that it has taught us to sell more with less. The manufacturers obviously will not like this at all, but this is the new way that dealers can stay profitable. The manufacturers will either have to offer historic levels of incentives to dealers or just build fewer vehicles.
MARK EDDINS, President, Friendly Chevrolet, Dallas
