Martin Swanty Auto Center Address

Auto dealerships see a 50% drop - Kingman Daily Miner - Kingman ...

KINGMAN - With the country swept up in a recession and the big three American automakers flirting with bankruptcy, local car dealerships are facing their own set of bad economic news.

A study recently published by accounting giant Grant Thornton LLP anticipates that as many as 3,800 car dealerships across the nation will be in danger of closing throughout 2009, as frozen credit markets, dwindling sales and an overabundance of increasingly unpopular domestic gas-guzzlers make it harder to keep inventory flowing.

One of the county's foremost names in automotive sales, Martin Swanty, owns three dealerships in Kingman, with another in Bullhead City. Swanty said since the economic crisis entered high gear in September with the collapse or sale of several major financial institutions, his dealerships have laid off roughly a fifth of their workforce across the board in order to cut costs.

"All dealerships - and there hasn't been any survivors, it's all of them - have had to make sacrifices and cutbacks, in mainly economic labor," Swanty said. "Every dealership will have less people working at it today than they did a year ago."

Additionally, Swanty said his total sales for the year have dropped by about half, again with the biggest drop in just the last three months.

"That's for both new and used vehicles," he said. "I've sold approximately the same amount of cars when I came here 25 years ago as I am now. I used to sell twice as many as I'm selling now."

And Swanty's hardly alone. Tony Santos is the general manager at Cliff Findlay Auto Center, whose four main brands - Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac and Chevrolet - are all American-made GM marques.

"We're roughly down, I'd say, about 40 to 50 percent in sales," Santos said. "We're just trying to weather the storm by making sure we cut our expenses as best we can.

I have a dream, writings and speeches that changed the world

The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development

Auto repair for dummies

Born standing up, a comic's life

An object of beauty, a novel