Chrysler dealer’s last day brings sadness, brisk sales at a franchisee’s ‘mausoleum’

Chrysler dealer’s last day: sadness, brisk sales

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. — The final day of business at Jim Samaras’ second-generation Chrysler dealership brought a last bittersweet hint of the good old days of American car sales.

Salesmen scurried to close deals with a stream of customers at Viking Dodge as pop music blared over parking-lot loudspeakers, trying to convey an atmosphere of normalcy. Business has been brisk since May 14 when Chrysler LLC, two weeks into a bankruptcy proceeding, included it on a list of 789 dealer franchises it was eliminating on Tuesday.

“I was telling my guys that Chrysler should announce bankruptcy every month, for crying out loud,” Samaras said in an attempt at gallows humor. “Business has been stellar since then.”

Similar scenarios played out at other ill-fated dealerships nationwide. Bargain-minded customers took advantage of big price markdowns as dealers cleared out their inventories. Some will stay in business, selling other brands or used cars. Others, such as Viking, said they were closing their doors for good Tuesday night.

Chrysler claims a large dealer base results in extra costs for the company that need to cut in order to be competitive in today’s global automotive market. Jim Press, Chrysler’s vice chairman and president, told a Senate committee that the poor performance of many of the dealers slated to lose franchises costs the company $1.5 billion in lost sales each year, along with $150 million in advertising and marketing costs and $33 million in administrative costs.

The dealers counter that they’re independent businesses that pick up their own costs. “We cost them nothing — we pay all of our expenses,” Samaras said, noting that he buys cars from the company and pays for all parts and training. “We’re a profit center to that factory.”

The stable business couldn’t mask the signs of distress at the 33-year-old business as its presence in this northwest Chicago suburb wound toward an end.

The giant parking lot contained a vacant area the size of a football field. Its fleet of vehicles for sale had shrunk to 26 as the clock ticked down toward closing. Someone had written “Believe!” in big letters on a dry-erase board in the sales office, evidence of desperate hope that a bankruptcy court judge in New York would save the dealerships by day’s end.

That hope was dashed in the late afternoon when U.S. Judge Arthur Gonzalez said Chrysler could proceed with its plan to terminate the 789 franchises, amounting to one-fourth of its dealers.

Teary-eyed sales manager Betty Jo Rosen said there was a sense of disbelief among the staff of 20 that Tuesday really marked the end.

“It’s like somebody with a terminal illness, and I’m trying to help them but I know my hands are tied,” she said. “To take it all away from us overnight … I just don’t understand it.”

Samaras, 53, whose late father James founded Viking Dodge in 1976, lived through the glory days in the late 1990s when the business sold 300 or 400 cars a month. Until the last four-week flurry of sales, that had slipped to a scant 10 or 15 sales a month this year.

Things started declining, he said, around the same time he opened the 44,000-square-foot facility in 2004 that Chrysler insisted on as a condition of his new franchise agreement. It dwarfed the previous business and conveyed a less friendly, more corporate image to his customers.

Then, within the last year, gas hit $4.50-a-gallon gas, credit became hard to get and public perceptions worsened about Chrysler’s vehicles and U.S. cars in general. That left him with a fleet of unpopular cars in an oversized facility and not enough customers.

While insisting he was not bitter, he did accuse Chrysler of “speaking with a forked tongue” about the franchise termination process and using the bankruptcy to circumvent state franchise laws.

“It doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways,” he said. “They’re trying to get rid of their partners that they forced to build these places.”

He had made arrangements to sell his remaining vehicles at day’s end to a Chrysler/Jeep dealer down the road. After completing a final late-night sale, Samaras locked up for the last time at 11:35 p.m. EDT.

Car shopper Kevin Flynn, 43, felt sympathy for Samaras’ plight along with those of the other 788 dealerships on Chrysler’s hit list. But customer support wasn’t what prompted him to make the 60-mile drive from Racine, Wis.; it was great deals, like the Dodge Journey he bought that was marked down from $35,000 to $26,000.

“This is a great time to be a car buyer — and not to be a car seller,” he said.