Bill Bosnos, general manager at Friendly Ford, poses by a 2020 Ford Mustang EcoBoost coupe outside the dealership showroom Thursday, June 18, 2020. The dealership moved the cars outside the showroom to make it safer for shoppers during the pandemic, he said.
Monday, June 22, 2020 | 2 a.m.
After taking a test drive without a salesman sitting next to him, Terry Bishop sat down at a freshly sanitized table to close the deal on a car at the Friendly Ford dealership on North Decatur Boulevard.
Outside, salespeople wearing face masks stalked the lot and customers browsed rows of vehicles.
Closed in mid-March to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, auto showrooms were allowed to reopen May 9 in the first stage of Nevada’s phased reopening plan.
Like other businesses, they must follow prescribed social distancing guidelines, which include a prohibition on salespeople accompanying customers on test drives.
“It was different to not have the salesman on the drive with you,” Bishop said. “Otherwise, coming down here didn’t seem very different.”
When the pandemic took hold of the U.S. economy earlier this year, the bottom dropped out on the auto industry.
Nationwide, the sale of light vehicles — cars, SUVs, vans and light trucks — dropped 48% in April compared to April 2019, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.
In Southern Nevada, new vehicle sales were down more than 40% in April compared to the same month in 2019, according to Andy MacKay, executive director of the Nevada Franchised Auto Dealers Association.
“When our showrooms were closed in Southern Nevada, some of the states surrounding us didn’t have the same rules in place,” MacKay said. “Arizona and Utah were more open, so those states, along with Idaho, were doing OK. There were some people from the Southern Nevada customer base who were going to St. George and Flagstaff to shop for vehicles.”
But dealerships in Las Vegas have started to rebound, McKay said.
“It’s turned around during the past 45 days or so,” MacKay said. “It’s been a significant challenge, but it’s much better than it had been. I do think it will be at least a year until we get back to normal.”
In May, Friendly Ford actually sold more vehicles than it did during the same month in 2019.
Bill Bosnos, Friendly’s general manager, said much of the uptick can be credited to attractive incentives rolled out in recent months by auto manufacturers. Most of the vehicles being moved are SUVs and trucks, he said.
“If someone would have asked me at the end of April what May would look like for us, I would not have said it would be a normal May. That’s what it was, though, a normal month. It’s pretty unbelievable,” Bosnos said.
Nationwide in May, dealers sold about 12.2 million new light vehicles, down 30% from the same month last year, the National Automobile Dealers Association reported.
As sales start to recover, that’s not to say that the way people are buying vehicles hasn’t changed.
When showrooms were closed, most dealerships were still open for business but had to focus on alternative ways to attract and interact with customers.
“We adapted,” Bosnos said. “We’ve always been in the internet world, customers already had the option of doing a lot of the legwork on buying a car online, but we never pushed it. We were cautious about it. It’s something that’s been changing, though it’s been slow.”
Bosnos pointed to the business model of Carvana, which is centered on cutting out dealerships with an online shopping experience and home delivery of vehicles.
“We know they’re out there and that there are other companies like Carvana that are growing,” Bosnos said. “I think that’s something that’s here to stay. As dealerships start to provide those types of solutions, and as customers become more comfortable with that type of process, that’s going to become more common.”
At Subaru of Las Vegas on Roy Horn Way, part of the Findlay Auto Group, general manager Burton Hughes said sales have picked up in recent weeks.
“When our business was partially closed at the beginning of the pandemic, I was sitting on probably the largest inventory of new cars I’ve ever had,” Hughes said. “We had all these new vehicles and our sales department was shut down. As soon as the governor opened the door for our showroom to open, though, it was like a flood. People were coming in.”
May sales set a monthly record, and June is off to a strong start, Hughes said.
“We’re not sure yet, but we could have another record for June,” Hughes said. “From what we see, the only thing that could put a damper on that is available inventory. The factories were shut down for six to eight weeks, so they weren’t producing cars. We’re just burning through our inventory right now.”
