dealership

Start your engines

We see a lot of poorly done software that is ostensibly meant for a specific business purpose but that looks like it was designed by someone who had no actual knowledge of the business in question. AutoSmart Dealership Management System, however, is refreshingly different. This attractive software program is easy to use and contains features that could be very helpful in managing an automotive business.

The program's interface is sleek and easy to navigate, with screens for sales, purchasing, and maintenance, as well as configuration options for contacts and other important information. We found it quite easy to record … Read more

Dealerships host high-tech how-tos

As newspaper ads and other forms of traditional marketing lose their grip, dealers are trying to connect with customers through clinics that explain complicated gadgets and other vehicle features.

Some luxury dealers have used the technique for years. Now dealers of mass-market brands are picking it up.

"The more comfortable [customers] are with the products we sell them, the more apt they are to come back and buy a product from us again," says Kim Winkler, new-car sales manager at Dan Pfeiffer Lincoln-Mercury in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Since January, Pfeiffer's staff has been staying late on the … Read more

Looking for an apartment? You may get a free iPad with your rent

How hot is Apple's iPad? Hot enough to use as a promotional tool for everything from buying a new car to renting a new apartment. In Portland, Oregon, while searching for a new place to call home, I came across several ads for apartments touting all the normal amenities, showing pictures of their fabulous views, and describing their "perfect" location. But, in the last couple weeks, something new has appeared on these listings.

With the increasing popularity of Apple's iPad, I would imagine more retailers would start to use it as a potential closing incentive. Car … Read more

Renting your apartment could come with a free iPad

Requiem for a Clunker: The Funeral

Dearly beloved and friends, today we lay to rest a possibly usable and/or drivable motor vehicle that has been judged a "clunker" by the government-sponsored CARS program and by its previous owner. This undesirable automobile has been sentenced to death via lethal injection that has disabled many a clunker's engine under the recently- imposed CARS legislation (see my blog from yesterday for more on that). Now that this damned vehicle lives no more, its carcass will be crushed and piled up in a junkyard by the undertaker operating the forklift of death.