| From “Car Dealership Guy”’ email blast. Got a kick out of this. Who got the Teddy Bear? Can we see it? This Prestige Auto guy says he’s like a “recovering addict”, so I guess that makes brokers drug dealers? I haven’t listened to the podcast and I probably won’t, but the summary made me laugh so I wanted to share. |
How one dealer’s broker addiction nearly wrecked his bottom line
On this episode of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast, Matthew Haiken, president of Prestige Auto Group, breaks down why he built years of volume by feeding auto brokers, what it actually cost him per car, and why quitting cold turkey changed everything.
A second-generation dealer who has run stores under the Lincoln, Volvo, and Polestar brands for more than 20 years, Haiken also built LotVision, an AI platform that gives dealers live analytics on competitors’ inventory, after watching Polestar pull its franchise from under him with almost no warning.
Lessons learned from Matthew:
1. Chasing brokers built volume, cut into profits.
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Haiken built a reputation as a self-proclaimed “broker king,” personally calling every broker in his market and treating them to top-tier perks, including gas fill-ups, keychains, and a teddy bear named after his father.
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The relationships helped him win manufacturer allocation, sales awards, and incentive trips, but as more dealers piled into the same broker relationships, competition drove margins down.
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By the time he quit, Haiken said each broker deal was losing about $2,000 net, not counting floor plan interest or vehicles that came back with excess mileage.
2. Quitting brokers cold turkey tanked sales, but protected the business. -
After learning New Jersey planned to declare brokering illegal, Haiken cut ties immediately rather than wait for enforcement to catch up with him.
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Sales dropped by nearly 40% to 50% almost overnight, an experience he compared to being “a recovering addict.”
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Redirecting that same energy toward used cars and customer service, rather than broker volume, ultimately strengthened the dealership’s actual net profit.
3. Frustration with cloudy manufacturer reporting pushed him to build his own tool. -
Haiken grew tired of vague weekly performance emails from OEM reps and built LotVision, a platform that tracks competitors’ inventory arriving and leaving in real time.
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The tool includes what he calls a “fly on the wall” feature, letting dealers monitor a specific competitor’s inventory activity directly instead of waiting on manufacturer summaries.
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He’s now piloting an OEM-facing version so dealers can push back with data when asked to take on more allocation than makes sense for their store.
Might as well change his website url to 
Chatgpt could do a better job…
