Auto dealers are finding ways to stay profitable despite fast-pivoting product plans by car companies as consumer tastes in powertrains and body style change.Ed GarstenCEO Ryan Rohrman is happy to sell you a new car or truck at any one of the 20 stores in the Rohrman Auto Group. But with automakers pivoting their product plans between powertrains and body styles and sizes at a pace that could bring on inventory vertigo, his company looks for a more predictable route to building its profits, and it’s not on the car lot. Indeed, Rohrman says his company puts a lot of its focus on building revenue in a way that’s not dependent on selling new vehicles. He calls it “absorption.” Ryan Rohrman, CEO of Rohrman Automotive Group Rohrman Automotive Group “We've always been taught that if we run our dealerships well, we don't need to be dependent on new cars, so that our fixed operations and used operations and our finance departments should be able to make our businesses sustainable, irregardless of decisions, good or bad, of what the new car manufacturers are doing,” said Rohrman, in an interview. Fixed operations is the trade term for vehicle service. Rohrman says 70% of the vehicles on the road today are serviced by independent service centers, leaving dealers with only 30% of the pie because owners believe they can get the work done faster and cheaper at those businesses than at dealerships.But boy, if you could just capture some of that oil change business from the drive-through shops, that’s money on the table just waiting to grow, and Rohrman’s dealerships aren’t about to leave it there.MORE FOR YOU“Oil changes drive 70% of fixed operations from a customer pay standpoint,” said Rohrman. So with a few exceptions, oil changes at Rohrman Automotive Group dealers are fifty bucks, for full synthetic oil up to seven quarts. The goal, he says, is to simply “get the cars in the drive.” A cheap oil change is a not only a good way to possibly suggestively sell other services, but provide another key revenue opportunity.“Fixed operations, it's not just a great profit center, but it's also a place that feeds our future for where we get our used car inventory from,” he pointed out.The strategy is slightly different at the mega Lithia & Driveway chain which sells virtually every auto brand online and in 20 U.S. states and several Canadian markets, and like its competition is managing the automakers’ product shifts, especially between EVs and hybrids. Dianna du Preez, chief customer officer, Lithia & Driveway.Lithia & Driveway“We can't control our supply of inventory. The allocation is determined by the by the OEMs, their product access determined by them. The thing we can control as retailers is the customer experience, and that’s where we really need to focus,” said Dianna du Preez, chief customer officer at Lithia & Driveway, in an interview. “We need to understand what suits a customer, and then we have to deliver to them the drive train that supports their need and give them the options that suit them.” Given the chain’s large online presence, it can shift inventory around the country as needed, says du Preez. Lithia & Driveway also operates an online training site called GreenCars that provides customers with “insights and knowledge to help them plan for an electric vehicle shift, or even just an understanding of the differences between the products,” she pointed out. While some automakers seem to be producing the types of vehicles that sell well in the right numbers for dealers, Rohrman says he also has to contend with another variety of car company that, he contends, has the formula all wrong. “They're making potentially poor decisions that we saw prior to Covid, where it's just make as many cars as humanly possible, jam it down the dealer throat, and then, you know, throw rebates at the dealers, at the consumer base, and try to move the product,” he explained. So if Rohrman and du Preez could make inventory wish lists to send to the automakers, what would be on them? “With the affordability need in our market right now, we need good, price competitive products, and a sedan makes sense, as well as an affordable hybrid crossover SUV type of a product,” said du Preez. For Rohrman, “It's definitely going to be anything hybrid, and most things in the mid to large SUV, mid to small SUV.” It’s what consumers are demanding, he said. “It's not these smaller cars.”