Goodlatte visits car dealer for sales report
STAUNTON — Sixth District Rep. Bob Goodlatte received a mixed report when visiting a Shenandoah Valley car dealership Friday.
Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, learned at Staunton Nissan Subaru Hyundai that the dealership’s Subaru sales are actually up about 4 percent over a year ago, and that truck sales are showing encouraging signs.
But the congressman also heard plenty from dealer management about decreased consumer confidence and access to credit for potential car buyers.
One sales executive told Goodlatte that the potential pool of banks for auto loans in the area was about half of what it was a year ago.
Patrick Janes, executive manager of the dealership, also said lenders are showing erratic behavior.
“The last couple of months the financing has been incredibly inconsistent,’’ said Janes, who said the lenders seem to change terms on a frequent basis.
Goodlatte said his sense is that banks are being overcautious during the financial crisis.
The result, the congressman said, is that potential car buyers who would make the payments are not getting financing access.
Ed Lewis, the owner of Staunton Nissan Subaru Hyundai, said another factor is consumer confidence.
“We need consumer confidence up,’’ said Lewis, who said consumers are not comfortable spending money during the recession.
Multiple forecasts say the United States is on a pace for less than 10 million car sales this year, well down from the 16.1 million sold in 2007.
Janes said the issue becomes significant when customers come to his dealership with high-mileage cars that need repairs.
He said customers who have cars with 150 to 180 thousand miles on them shouldn’t invest heavily in repairing the vehicles. He said they should buy new cars.
Goodlatte said the importance of Friday’s visit was a dual one. He not only got a sense of how Valley car sales are doing, but also said the issue goes to U.S. manufacturing.
While the origins of Nissan and Subaru are in Japan, both have auto manufacturing plants in this country.
Overall, the congressman said he is seeing mixed signals in the current U.S. economy.
“Long-term I don’t know,’’ Goodlatte said. “I have a lot of concerns about the money being spent.”
Goodlatte voted against the federal stimulus package.
The congressman has heard a lot from school superintendents in his congressional district about the lack of information on how the stimulus money can be spent.
“The administration needs to make the guidelines much clearer,’’ Goodlatte said. He attributes some of the difficulty to the Obama administration getting all the needed staff in place at federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education.
Goodlatte said school districts need flexibility in how to spend the stimulus money, and up to this point the flexibility is lacking.
“The school boards can’t stabilize. They must spend the money in new programs,’’ he said.
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Reader Reactions
Bunk: if a state official wanted to know how car sales are doing, all one would have to do is to look at the taxes and/or the DMV filings for car registrations, and transfers. It is not that difficult!
So we guide sales by car ownership?—again Bunk.
Look at the municipalities’ sales report card—heck check the dump sites—haven’t the trash waste declined—has it increased lately—trash is probably the quickest way to see if people are buying.
Now if you’re lookig at large expenditures—people would buy a new LCD TV before they would buy a car—oh that can be on the internet—and oh, how do we catalogue that—and oh, hasn’t Goodlatte been the internet whiz kid?
Step it up guys, this isn’t 1970 anymore!
Explicate your knowledge or get out of office!
We have smart-@ss liberals who have gain an advantage on the GOP becuase the conservative have relied on status-quo for a status—to go. We need some men and woman who are quick on their toes and who can rival any CEO to the ground with the basis of confidence and knowledge. Tricks of the trade—seem to be outdated.
—along this same note and off a little, we can vie the same thing for conservative journalists—we have Rush Limbaugh—we need to be better than this if we are to compete.
The GOP must tackle and accept Gay rights, Women leadership and reverse discrimination—that should be a cause (reverse discrimination) in the near future; whereas, we see where inner city blues are beginning to trammel upong the now and up and up becoming minority rural citizenships—quantify the quality, don’t qualify the quantity—if so, outside interests of the U.S. will soon reck heaval upon our own intelligence.
Lot’s of bread here hopefully to catch a few different ears.
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