Veteran Dealer Drops Cadillac for Toyota

Veteran dealer Hoot McInerney has done the unheard-of after selling Cadillacs for half of his nearly 60 years in auto retail.

The impending octogenarian and confidante of a bevy of past and present automotive senior executives sold his Cadillac franchise. It had been dualed with Toyota and Scion at a McInerney dealership in Clinton Township, MI, northeast of Detroit.

“I can remember when Cadillac was the No.1 luxury brand and the hottest franchise to buy or acquire in an open point,” says Hoot (real name Martin; the nickname comes from his owlish appearance).

“There’s nobody else I know of who was able to pair up Cadillac and Toyota in the same location, but Cadillac has gone flat out on the east side (of suburban Detroit) thanks to Lexus, and we needed the space for Toyota,” he says.

“So I sold Cadillac to multi-brand dealer Jim Riehl, who’s putting Cadillac into his new Hummer store. Hummer is suddenly in the pits and Riehl needed something to protect his investment in Hummer.”

McInerney is a legend in Michigan dealer circles, having trained many younger dealers at what now is a 5-store group stretching from a Ford-Lincoln-Mercury point in Port Huron to a Chrysler-Jeep store in Woodhaven, in metro Detroit’s downriver area.

“Location is everything in this business,” McInerney says. “You can go broke trying to sell even the top brands like Toyota, Lexus and Ford trucks in the wrong location.”

Family members are active in all the stores, which include Star Lincoln-Mercury in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, where Hoot has his office adjacent to the showroom floor.

Other McInerneys, including brother Tom in Woodhaven Chrysler-Jeep and son Robert at the Toyota dealership, all have their offices overlooking the showrooms. McInerney says that is key to a dealership’s customer relationships.

He made his mark in the industry by befriending top executives and sales chiefs for the brands he sold.

His top-level associates include former Ford Motor Co. president and Chrysler Corp. CEO Lee Iacocca; the late General Motors Corp. sales Vice President and Cadillac General Manager Robert Lund (who later became a dealer); one-time Chrysler and former Ford sales chief Ben Bidwell; past GM CEO Jim Roche; and former Chrysler sales chiefs John Naughton and Gar Laux.

Domestic auto makers ran new product styling ideas and dealer programs by a small group of “inside” dealers that included McInerney, Bob Tasca and Roger Penske.

“These guys trusted us as dealers,” says McInerney. “It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s, when bean-counters like GM’s Roger Smith, Ford’s Jacques Nassar and the Mercedes-Benz guys that ran Chrysler took over the Big Three and ran them into the ground that they forgot about us and the troubles they have today got started.”

Hurting metro Detroit luxury-vehicle business are auto-industry cutbacks in management and white-collar personnel, affecting employee-discount sales of Chrysler 300s, Cadillacs and Lincolns.

“Even Toyota (Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.) is taking its lumps, especially in Tundra pickups and Sequoia SUVs,” McInerney says. “But the Scion store next door is going great and I have to congratulate Toyota for being so foresighted as to set up the Scion brand.

“The Detroit Three got so hung up with the profits on their trucks, they let Toyota slip by them with a standalone youth brand and the Japanese Big Three come in with the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit and Nissan Versa just as the big-ticket truck market was tanking.”

McInerney says overcrowded dealer ranks in urban markets should be thinned out. But he warns against reductions going too far, contending that dealer loyalty is boosted by stores that aren’t selling huge numbers of vehicles.

“Who in his or her right mind would buy a new car from someone who sells 5,000 vehicles a month?” he asks. “That’s why Wal-Mart will never sell cars, new or used. They live on volume and not customer service.”

Toyota stores regularly have scored below average on customer dealership satisfaction surveys, but McInerney seems to be bucking that trend.

Craig Muran, 40, has been general manager at McInerney’s Toyota-Scion store for three years, after 17 years working at Toyota dealerships in metro Detroit. Muran has been overseeing expansion of the Toyota and Scion facilities into the space created by the Cadillac departure.

“There’s a customer-friendly atmosphere here I’ve never seen at other Toyota dealerships,” Muran says. “We have a 6-month waiting period for the Prius (hybrid-electric vehicle), but nobody’s cancelling out because Toyota and Scion ownership is a must-have.

“It has a lot to do with their great product, obviously, but the fact that we’re a McInerney dealership has a lot to do with their loyalty, too.

“Our 35 employees feel the same way. Hoot and his son Bob, my boss here, have a lot of expectations from us and pay us accordingly when we deliver.

“We’ll miss Cadillac, but thank heaven Toyota can fill the void.”