Lynchburg-area dealers try to combat sluggish car sales

By Bryan Gentry

Published: September 18, 2008

High gas prices and worsening economic conditions are slowing new car sales in the Lynchburg area.

Hence the hundreds of cars in the K-Mart parking lot along Wards Road — an attempt by a group of local automotive dealers to jump-start the market again.

Several dealerships with Mabry Automotive Group, along with Terry Volkswagen Subaru and Apple Ford, are holding a sale there beginning Thursday after months of a down market.

“Just because the market is bad, there’s no reason we can’t sweeten it up a bit,” said C.J. Franzelas, vice president of Mabry Automotive Group.

Franzelas said gas prices and tighter credit requirements — the result of subprime loan fallouts and high foreclosure rates — have combined to make the market idle this year.

New car registrations in the city of Lynchburg reveal how much the market has dropped off.

From January through Sept. 12 this year, only 965 new 2008 model vehicles were registered. That’s a 26 percent drop from the 1,306 new 2007 models registered in the same time frame last year.

Franzelas said his business’s sales are off by about 30 percent.

For about seven years, he organized a multi-dealer sale at River Ridge mall, but last year he stopped because it became harder to organize. This year, the drop in sales motivated him to try again.

He also invited food vendors, a credit union and an insurance company to the sale.

Late Wednesday night, Franzelas was directing traffic around the K-Mart parking lot, getting the cars in place and ready to sell.

He said there are signs the automobile market might be rebounding. Car values at auctions he attends have started to go back up.

“I’m very confident that this will turn around in the next five months,” he said.