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With son David, Steve and Jolene Kaping car shop. Kaping says Metro dealers must open Saturday to get his business.More dealers open Saturdays
Car buyers' lifestyles, competition lead Metro showrooms to breach weekday-only tradition.
Kirk Mauck, left, and brother Rich look over used vehicles Saturday in Farmington Hills. Dealers offer mixed views on how Saturday openings affect sales. In the Detroit market, they accounted for only about 3 percent.
Weekend car shopping
About one-fourth of Metro Detroit auto dealers are now open on Saturdays, breaking a long-time custom of closed dealerships on weekends. When do you prefer to do your car shopping?
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FARMINGTON HILLS -- After decades of frustrating new car and truck shoppers by selling cars only on weekdays, a growing number of Metro Detroit dealers are breaking with local tradition and opening their showrooms on Saturdays.
About one-quarter of the nearly 250 dealerships across Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties now do business on Saturdays, a survey by The Detroit News shows.
For most of the past 40 years, few dealerships violated an unwritten pact to remain closed on weekends, but increasing competition and the demands of time-starved buyers are driving dealers to expand hours.
Tom Holzer Ford in Farmington Hills tiptoed into Saturday hours in 2003 by opening the last Saturday of each quarter. Then last year, it opened every weekend between Labor Day and July 4. Now, the dealership is considering keeping Saturday hours all year.
"There's been tremendous traffic in the showroom," said sales manager Brian Burke. "From about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. it's an absolute zoo."
The biggest winners may be customers. People in Metro Detroit often have had to rearrange work schedules or take a day off to shop for a new car or truck during the week.
"It's really convenient to do it on Saturday," said Princetta McDade, 60, of Farmington Hills as she browsed the auto lot at Tom Holzer Ford on Saturday.
"By the time you get off work in the afternoon and try to rush around -- well, they all close at 5 or 6."
In the mid-1960s, the Motor City became the only major U.S. city where auto dealerships remained closed on weekends and most weekday nights after a group of local dealers agreed to the hours to stymie a union drive.
At the time, sales representatives were trying to organize under the Teamsters and were demanding a five-day workweek. Dealers who didn't fall in line faced death threats, widespread vandalism and even gunfire. By the mid-1970s, virtually every dealership was closed on Saturday.
Longtime Detroit-area dealer Martin "Hoot" McInerney said dealers made the deal to keep the peace with workers. "Our people did not want to work on Saturday," he said.
In 1984, the Federal Trade Commission accused more than 140 Metro Detroit dealers of conspiring to set hours designed to prevent consumers from comparison shopping.
Following a long legal battle, most of the dealers entered into a one-year agreement not to discuss hours among themselves and to stay open for a minimum of 62 hours a week.
Once the year was up, however, most reverted to traditional hours. The few who opened on Saturdays often endured threats and vandalism from competitors.
"When we opened around 1991 or '92, employees from other dealerships threw rocks at our windows," said Larry White, general manager of Marty Feldman Chevrolet.
In recent years, dealers have felt pressure from automakers to open on Saturday, McInerney said. He still keeps his dealerships closed on Saturday, but many others have reversed course.
With the sun shining and its doors wide open last Saturday, Tom Holzer Ford's lot at 10 Mile and Haggerty was crawling with families and individual shoppers.
Commerce Township residents April and Jim Smith said they found three dealerships out of seven or eight open on Saturday.
Steve and Jolene Kaping moved to Farmington Hills about a year ago from Iowa and didn't realize at first that many Metro Detroit dealerships remain closed on Saturday.
"In Iowa and Illinois, everybody's always open on Saturday," said Steve Kaping, 42, an engineer. "But it makes a huge difference because I work from 9 to 6 so there aren't many opportunities to look on weekdays."
Most dealers west of Telegraph Road are open on Saturday while many of those east of the busy corridor are closed, said Larry White, general manager at Marty Feldman Chevrolet in Novi. It's still difficult to find a dealership south of I-96 open on Saturday, he said. Even as more Detroit-area dealers break the never-on-Saturday custom, southeast Michigan still lags other areas of the nation in weekend vehicle sales.
"The rest of the country is moving toward hours that more closely match the lifestyle of the customer," said Paul Taylor, chief economist at the National Automobile Dealers Association.
Last year, about 32 percent of all vehicle purchases nationally were made on Saturdays, according to CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. But in the four-county Detroit market, Saturday sales accounted for only about 3 percent of all vehicle sales.
"When you're in a competitive environment, where you have some dealers open weekends and some not, you're losing sales if you're not open," said CNW president Art Spinella.
It's not clear, however, if sales made on Saturday are simply those that would have been made on another day of the week, or if they amount to an increase in total sales volume.
But dealers paint a mixed picture of how successful Saturdays are in boosting sales volumes.
Page Toyota in Southfield has been opened Saturdays for about 10 years, but owner Bob Page isn't convinced he's landing any new customers as a result.
"It's still not a big selling day," Page said. "The primary advantage is on the service side, and it might swing some sales our way."
"It's hit and miss," added Larry White at Marty Feldman Chevrolet. "Last Saturday we sold 22 cars, the Saturday before, we sold 2."
Rick Morris, the general sales manager at Dick Morris Chevrolet in Commerce Township, says Saturday is tied for the dealership's third-busiest day with Friday, behind Monday and Thursday when the store is open late.
Even so, Morris says it's worth it to keep the doors open on Saturday.
"If you're not open, you're going to lose volume," Morris said. "But if you want to maintain the same, you've got to be there because that's one less day people have to compare you to someone else. The price of admission has gone up, and if you're not willing to pay it you're going to lose out."
For stalwarts like Russ Shelton, who owns Rochester Hills Pontiac-Buick, staying closed on Saturday is a matter of preserving the morale of his work force.
"My salespeople work about 46 hours a week; that's pretty normal in the industry," Shelton said. "That allows us to maintain a good sales force."
At Varsity Lincoln-Mercury in Novi, employees are split into two teams. The team that works on Saturday gets a three-day weekend the following week, said sales manager Dean Silver.
Other dealerships are making similar provisions for employees working a sixth day.
The Detroit Auto Dealers Association still won't discuss the pros and cons of Saturday hours.
"It's an individual decision a dealer has to make from a purely business standpoint," said lawyer Robert Weller.
Whether or not being open on Saturday translates into a weekend sales boom is not the prime concern of many dealers who have decided to do business on the sixth day of the week.
"To stay competitive in the marketplace and to make sure we're available for our customers makes good business sense," said George Glassman, owner of the Glassman Auto Group in Southfield.
It sure makes sense to Steve Kaping, who warns dealers who are closed on Saturday they should not expect to win his business.
"If they're not open, that's not going to do us any good today," he said.
You can reach Ed Garsten at (313) 223-3217 or egarsten@detnews.com.
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