• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

Should I become a Jeep dealer?

CoastieJ

NAXJA Forum User
Location
San Diego
Got a question for you. Realizing the demand for Jeeps here in SoCal is high, I'm interested in buying and selling Jeeps for profit ...nothing crazy, just a Jeep here and there. I know enough about them at this point to know when I should leave one alone (I hope). I'm just starting to realize some of the hurdles I need to go thru to get licensed here in CA. I just need to get in those private auto auctions where the used car dealers go and I can purchase Jeeps for wholesale prices. That is the key. Has anyone out there tried this? Any advice from those who have? Thanks!
 
If I decided to be a vehicle dealer, I would be a VW dealer.. hands down, look at the high number of Hot chicks that drive Bugs and Jetta's.. no question VW dude, VW's...
 
Geepfreak said:
If I decided to be a vehicle dealer, I would be a VW dealer.. hands down, look at the high number of Hot chicks that drive Bugs and Jetta's.. no question VW dude, VW's...
Yeah...they are all cute...till they open their mouth.
 
My neighbors think I am anyway.
 
Look at it this way: how much money would you make of a single vehicle? How many vehicles would you have to move to make a living? How long till you saturate the market to the point that things will slow down to make it no longer cost effective?
 
Kejtar said:
Look at it this way: how much money would you make of a single vehicle? How many vehicles would you have to move to make a living? How long till you saturate the market to the point that things will slow down to make it no longer cost effective?

Saturate the market in the LA basin?

Not in a million years.........

However, the other questions are good ones.
 
CoastieJ said:
Got a question for you. Realizing the demand for Jeeps here in SoCal is high, I'm interested in buying and selling Jeeps for profit ...nothing crazy, just a Jeep here and there. I know enough about them at this point to know when I should leave one alone (I hope). I'm just starting to realize some of the hurdles I need to go thru to get licensed here in CA. I just need to get in those private auto auctions where the used car dealers go and I can purchase Jeeps for wholesale prices. That is the key. Has anyone out there tried this? Any advice from those who have? Thanks!

Here's what you need to get a used car dealers license:

You must have a physical location, with a sign, that is used strictly for used car sales and display.

You need to complete a mandatory dealer class.

You need to get a bond.

You need to get a business insurance policy.

You then complete the application for dealer license, then wait for the DMV to come out and inspect your location, and if they approve your facility they will issue you a license.

You cannot get a dealer license without a location.

Once you get the dealer license then you can register at the various actions to buy vehicles. But, you must remember that every car sold at an action was sold to the last person raising their hand, and many dealers sell the cars that they weren't willing to keep (for one reason or another) at the auctions.....so you can get burned. There is a learning curve, and you will loose money on a few cars. Hell, I've been doing it for 25 years and I still get burned occasionally.

Now, you can also get just a wholesale dealers license, which will allow you to buy cars at the auctions, or from other dealers, but you still need an office dedicated to the dealership business, and you need all the other stuff, and then you can't retail any cars, only wholesale to other dealers.

So..........unfortunately, you can't do what you want to do.
 
Goatman said:
Saturate the market in the LA basin?

Not in a million years.........

However, the other questions are good ones.
Saturate the niche he's after. At first he might be a novelty and people will flock from all over... then only the locals would be buying and later..... well....
 
Kejtar said:
Saturate the niche he's after. At first he might be a novelty and people will flock from all over... then only the locals would be buying and later..... well....

Not even remotely possible. Jeeps are hot on the used car market. The problem wouldn't be selling enough to be successful, it would be buying enough to be successful. Wranglers, and cheaper Cherokees, are in demand on the wholesale market and bring top dollar at the car auctions. The origin of a majority of used vehicles on the wholesale market is trade ins, and most dealers keep Jeeps that they take in trade because they're easy to sell, which makes them a limited supply item on the wholesale market and drives the prices up.

There are well over 100 used car dealers in Bakersfield, you can't imagine how many there are in LA or San Diego. About half of all used cars sold are sold by dealers, and about half are sold private party. If you are a used car dealer, and you can get the product that is in demand, you will sell them.
 
We've actually stopped buying cars at our little car lot and are concentrating most of our efforts on xj's and zj's...in six years we've sold 1033 vehicles(not bad for a 2-4 person show), of those 10% have been xj's, mj's, and zj's...now I'm just trying to get rid of the other makes...really hard to grab that niche, its taken 6 years but now people look for jeeps at our lot and most are bought before the check out process is complete...the cars are just filler for the front line....

did I mention we just repo'd a xj that had 29,048 miles with out an oil change...thats our record at the lot now...

BTW...anyone want to move to florida and buy a car lot? 6 years of buyherepayhere is enough for me...we've been very good at screening customers and actually have a repo rate hovering about 10%...most dealers have a lot higher rates than that and think nothing about having to repo 25% of what they sell...if they hold the note...around here atleast

be ready to baby sit every customer through blown headlights and dead batteries and all the other trauma of owning a used car...if fact...just had one call my father at 8pm about her car overheating...two problems with that...its 8 pm...and my father doesnt work at my car lot...they just saw the same last name in the phone book and decided to inconvenience him...

I've also heard not to try and sell used volvo's...not that the cars are all bad but that the people shopping for them are nuts...just what I heard...
 
Car auctions are not all that. As said above, nice, popular, easy to sell vehicles will bring top dollar. Sometimes they will bring as much or more than you'll see in them in the classifieds. In my area they're are car auctions that anyone can go to, you might see if you can find some of those to go to and see what it's like. I bought and sold a few vehicles along and enjoyed it, staying mostly with stuff I liked, then became a licenced dealer for several years and hated everything about it.The best advise I can give you is from the time you walk in the door till the time you walk out, every word you hear is a lie ,lol.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top