Car sales sealed en Español

By Tom Steadman
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — The dealer lot is jammed with cars and trucks, all of them shiny and preowned, most of them late-model, many carrying low mileage and hefty sticker prices.

Not unlike many other car lots in town. Except here, all the signs are in Spanish, the staff is all Latino — as are virtually all the customers — and the TV in the showroom stays tuned to Univision.

At Familia Auto Sales, 1007 Summit Ave., Greensboro auto magnate Bob Dunn is dealing — en Español.

On the lot, Manager Oscar Garcia greets a prospective buyer with a "buenas tardes" and a big smile. That's because this customer, Norberto Vaquera, who owns a local gutter business with his two brothers, is no stranger. He already has bought four vehicles — two Chevy Tahoe SUVs, a truck and a car — from Familia for some of his relatives. Now, he's looking for a car for his wife.

Repeat customers such as Vaquera — one of an estimated 500,000 Hispanics who have provided North Carolina with the nation's fastest growing Latino immigrant population — are drawing plenty of interest from car dealers, most of whom already employ some bilingual sales staff.

But Familia is one of the area's first dealerships to target Latinos.

"With the growing number of Hispanics in the area, we decided to make it exclusively Hispanic," said Rick Powell, general manager of Bob Dunn Ford-Hyundai, which is directly behind Familia Auto Sales and formerly used the Summit Avenue location for Dunn's Subaru dealership.

Last year, Subaru sales were relocated to West Wendover Avenue, where Dunn already had a Jaguar dealership. That left the company with an empty lot it could use to tap into a burgeoning customer base.

Garcia, a Mexico native who had been part of the Dunn sales staff, became Familia's manager seven months ago. His two-person sales staff, Lorena Limon and Sandra Villamizar, are from Mexico and Colombia, respectively.

"They're more comfortable dealing with someone who speaks Spanish," Powell said. Even before starting up Familia, which means "family" in Spanish, the dealership usually kept at least two Hispanic people on its sales staff, he said.

Latino buyers already accounted for about 5 percent of monthly sales at Bob Dunn Ford-Hyundai, Powell said. "We probably sold a dozen vehicles a month to Hispanic customers," he said.

At Familia, sales average about 20 a month, Powell said.

"It's doing pretty well," he said. "But we've still got a long way to go. We'd like to sell about 80 a month."

Other local dealers also cater to the growing base of Latino customers, which they try to reach with advertising on Spanish-language radio and in newspapers. At Green Ford, three of the dealership's 20 salespeople are Latino, General Manager Mike Koballa said. Sales to Hispanic customers average 20 to 25 per month, he said.

"It's growing like crazy," Koballa said. "The best thing about it is, people generally come in with good down payments, love Ford products, and have a great work ethic. We sell them a lot of commercial vehicles — trucks and vans. It's been a good thing for us."

Powell, the Bob Dunn general manager, said that although the growing Hispanic market can be lucrative, it also comes with some obstacles.

"It's not an easy one to tap," he said. "A lot of immigrants don't have Social Security numbers, so you have to use finance companies who will accept tax ID numbers. Often they want older cars, so they can take them back to Mexico without paying big taxes on them. But then finance companies don't want to finance older cars. It can be a difficult deal to make happen."

Still, Latinos constitute a consumer base that can't be ignored, said Tricia Merrell, vice president of marketing for Bill Black Chevrolet-Cadillac.

Her dealership tries to keep an Hispanic salesperson on staff and sells five to 10 vehicles a month to Latinos, Merrell said. She said Black is trying hard to hire a replacement for a Spanish-speaking salesperson who left. In fact, Black's entire staff was required to take a course at UNCG on automotive-specific Spanish.

"Our whole dealership is based around referrals and word of mouth," Merrell said. "That's especially important with us for the Hispanic community."
Contact Tom Steadman at 373-7351 or tsteadman@news-record.com

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