Maybe! The few Hyundai dealers I’ve been to have off the same vibes as the Kia dealers I dealt with.
Who in the world pays over sticker for the Genesis, anyway?
Clearly you’ve never met a Honda dealer selling a CTR
Never met that dealer. I am selling TRD PROs over sticker and that is uncomfortable for me and the customers.
My son and and I is how u would say it at a proper luxury dealership.
You came back from not posting for a year for that?
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The Acura dealerships I used to go to was just like a Honda Toyota dealer. Also it’s tough for them when there are so few cars on their line up so I see a parallel with genesis there. When Acura first started, the Legends and Integras were hot. After they screwed up the TL, they only had the MDX.
The befuddlement.
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Having recently interacted with both a Honda and Acura dealership, I would agree in my specific instance the physical facilities were of similar quality. It was the staff that was different. The Acura dealership was always pleasant, the sales man delivered the car to my house and they were great with all maintenance/warranty issues. The Honda dealership was just chaotic, disorganized and crowded. I would love to get another Acura there due to experience but I won’t be since I am not leasing another Gen 3 MDX and I definitely am not going to pay a premium for new MDX right when it comes out.
Ford and Chevy dealers in PA are actually pretty nice. My local Ford dealer goes as far as to provide a decent catered lunch (precovid ofc) every day, they usually have actually good food.
They have this open floor plan thing, where the advisor sits down at a table, you can eat and they bring a tablet to review a deal with you.
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Yeah I must admit I have not set foot in an Acura dealership for years. I have had a few Lexus and they definitely project an high end image. But I ended up having them service at Toyota dealerships even when they were under warranty. Toyota literally charges half the price on most required maintenance.
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+1 to this. I think that, as long as people purchasing a Genesis have dedicated salespeople that offer a customer-service experience comparable to what you get a luxury brand, Genesis might find a way to survive even w/o a dedicated dealership.
Service station might be a slightly diff matter (I dunno; purchasing a $50-$70K car surrounded by cheaper models doesn’t seem that big a deal to me but dropping off my car for service next to Elantras and Fortes seems like a bigger prob, for some reasons), but Genesis offers concierge service for that.
I assume you would know more about this than would I, but, of all the brands that have pushed upmarket, the only one I think of w/ truly enduring success is Lexus. Acura was hot for many yrs, but then the products got muddled and… And, while Lexus doesn’t make many interesting cars, one cannot deny that the cars have tremendous fit and finish, reliability, and resale value and that Lexus has/had much better dealership/service experience than the Germans (at least for awhile).
So I guess my point is that I’m not entirely sure if there is a clearly defined successful path, other than making models of perceived high quality (and having a “killer app” in the form of the RX and a strong backup in the ES) b/c maybe Lexus was an anomaly.
My local Chevy dealer is selling C8 Vettes for $25-35k over and appears to not feel the least bit uncomfortable in so doing.
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Speaking like a grandpa again. When I was in college a classmate’s parents scored an Acura dealership, it was like printing money for a few years. Some of my Korean (heritage at least) classmates were hoping to get a civic or corolla and then they were gifted a Hyundai Pony (was not available in the US, we had them in Canada). The damage that car did to the Hyundai brand took them years to recover.
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Agreed, Lexus is dialed in the most. A lot of this comes from the manufacturer, they probably threw a lot of interest free money at dealers so they could upgrade their facilities/build new ones. I know locally, all the Lexus stores are nice. Although the German makes have also thrown a lot of money out there in upgrades too.
If only lexus used their money to update their cars instead of their dealers, they might actually make a product that isn’t at least 5 years out of date.
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Toyota has been very risk adverse when it comes to updating their cars and spending money on R&D and well… spending money on anything.
They partner up and move the risk of product development to other companies (BMW, Mazda, Subaru) and then smack their brand on the resulting product.
I think eventually this will all come to hurt Toyota and Lexus sales in the long run as they fail to innovate and ride the coattails of their 80’s successes.
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It’s always been their model, let Benz and others develop the new tech, then copy it and make it reliable. Hence the behind 5 years
Paradoxically their very first LS was the closest they got to matching the cachet and desirability of the MB S-class.
Every subsequent iteration they’ve fallen further behind.
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Can’t argue w/ their business model, though (at least in the US, where I think reliability in under serviced cars seems to matter more than it does in, say, Europe). As cars become more and more appliance-like, I think reliability will still matter to people.
The move to the newer platforms has actually also improved the handling dynamics of their most recent offerings, IMHO.