Classic Nissan Returns, Redesigned Subaru Outback, Funding Dealer Expansion

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Whether you drive a car, need a car, or just occasionally bummer ride with friends, you've

come to the right place.

Join Jill and Tom as they break down everything that's going on in the auto world.

New car reviews, shopping tips, driving green, electric cars, classic cars, and plenty of

great guests.

This is the Consumer Guide Car Stuff podcast.

All right, this is the Consumer Guide Car Stuff podcast.

I'm Tom Appel.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today.

When you get a chance, check us out at ConsumerGuide.com.

All sorts of cool stuff there, my new car reviews, all sorts of fun classic car stuff

and car history stuff.

Plus, you can listen to the podcast right there on our homepage, though you really should

subscribe.

In studio with me is Jill Siminello, contributing editor here at ConsumerGuide.com.

North American Car of the Year, Jur-er.

Jur-er.

I always, I need to throw that sable in there very deliberately or I lose it.

Jur-er.

I'm not a, I'm not a linguist.

No you are not.

And she's a prolific freelancer.

Yes.

I made a mistake last week.

Which one?

Well, well, how many do you have?

I know you made one.

Okay.

Maybe it's the same one.

Okay.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

Right now on the phone, Jim O'Brill, communications director for the Chicago Auto Show.

Jim, how are you?

You were on the floor of the show.

I am.

Hi, Tom.

Hi, Jill.

How are you guys doing?

Good.

More importantly, how are you doing?

I imagine you're busy.

I'm hanging in there.

It's been a whirlwind of a few days here, kicking off with our media preview, rolling

right in the first look for charity and rolling right into opening day.

It's been a lot going on down here at McCormick Place, but all really positive energy here

at the Chicago Auto Show this year.

It looks good.

I'm enjoying the pictures.

I've been following you guys on Facebook.

Tell us about why people should go to the show.

Some surprises, right?

I saw that the Cadillac Celestic Cadillac's crazy nearly $400,000 custom EV.

That's there.

Yeah.

Cadillac didn't tell us that.

That was a nice surprise.

We were walking the show during movement, and all of a sudden I turned my head.

I was like, I didn't know that one was going to be here, but we're happy to have it.

But also on the show floor is the Chevy Corvette CX Concept, another one that they kept from

us until it arrived.

That's cool.

People are flocking around that car, so definitely very cool to see that.

Tesla has their robo-taxi concept here.

I saw that.

So a couple wild ones.

That's certainly a unique ... I don't know how I feel about getting in one of those taxis,

but you can certainly check it out here on the show floor.

That's the safest way to do that.

Well, you know what?

The CyberCab is actually on Chicago streets right now testing.

I was heading out to the ... and this is the gold one.

I was out on heading up to the suburbs on Friday for an appointment, and I was like,

what in the Tesla is that?

There was this gold thing on the road.

It didn't have a rear window, it had these huge gold hubcaps, and then you drive around.

All I saw was that 30 inch screen or whatever is on the dash, and I couldn't tell it didn't

have a steering wheel or foot pedals.

But apparently, then I get to the auto show, and I saw it on the show floor, and I was

like, oh my gosh, that's it, that's it.

I saw that.

And they were telling me that they have two or three models currently on the streets in

Chicago testing with a human driver or human person sitting in the seat testing it.

I was like, ah, I saw it.

What other surprises do you have for us?

There's a lot of new models on the show floor that I think a lot of people have not had

a chance yet to see here in Chicago.

Kia brought out the 2027 Tellurine, which is just in dealerships now.

Toyota's got the new RAV4 here, Honda's Preludes on display, Subaru brought out their full

line of new electric vehicles, including the Uncharted and the Trail Seeker along with

the new Outback.

So there's a lot of new models on the show floor, but I have to tell you, the buzz that

I'm seeing all over social media is our new Chi-Town Alley area.

So we created this new space really to celebrate car culture here in Chicago, and so we invited

several car clubs, everything from exotic to Japanese import cars to low riders to American

muscle with a Mustang club.

And then we had a contest where we selected six finalists to showcase their vehicles in

the center circle.

And the hype around this space has been incredible, it's been very exciting because the energy

and it's a celebration, they're all together, they're all just true car fans, and then not

to kick it off, this weekend we had Sung Kang from the movie Drifter, he's got a new movie

out, he was also in the Fast and Furious franchise, so he was here drawing huge crowds

of people to the Chi-Town Alley space, so it's been really fun to see that come to life

this year.

Well, that's really cool, remind people what they need to know to come down and see you

guys.

Yeah, the show is open now through President's Day, February 16th, opens at 10 a.m. every

day.

You can buy your tickets at the gate or you can buy them in advance online at ChicagoAutoShow.com,

that's the easiest place to grab them, and then all the information for parking, what

vehicles are at the show, and everything else, it's all at the website ChicagoAutoShow.com.

Jim sounds good, good luck with the rest of the show.

Thank you guys, I appreciate the time today.

All right, take care, that was Jim O'Brien with the ChicagoAutoShow, what did I get

wrong?

Now you're putting me on the spot and I can't remember, it was an engine, yes, okay, it

was, what did we talk about last week?

Outlander.

Yes, so it was the engine, you said it was, that's it, okay, you said it was the same engine

as the Nissan Rogue and it is not.

Yep, yep, yep, Brain Fart, they're entirely different engines.

Yeah, and I meant to mention it at the end of the show and Brain Fart on my end, I just

didn't get it right.

Always correct me, I don't want to be wrong.

Yeah, so the Mitsubishi uses a 1.5-liter four-cylinder turbocharged 175-horse, the Rogue though

mechanically similarly uses a Nissan engine.

And it's one, I think it's also a 1.5-liter, but it's a three-cylinder, and somehow more

horsepower, like 200 horsepower.

Yes.

Actually the Rogue feels down right quick.

Yeah.

So there you go, my bad, I apologize for the error.

Who corrected you?

Me.

Oh.

Like I woke up like, that's not right.

When you said it, I was like, I don't think that's right.

When you said four-cylinder, I'm like, that's not right, but it was right.

But I didn't correct you.

I'm right, I'm right.

Yeah, so just back to the Chicago Auto Show for a hot minute, I just want to say, it's

a smaller show, but it's a lot, it's cool.

There's a lot of good stuff there.

The one thing that Jim didn't mention that I think it's really cool to look at is the

Corvette CX concept, which is.

I wasn't aware that was there.

It is, and it was there yesterday, so it's there on public days, and it is really, really

cool.

So I think that that's definitely worth a look, see, that's like, I think one of the

only concepts I saw on the show, Florida.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

So and then I do have to give a shout out to Ryder Lam, who is participating in the

Chaitan Alley with his 1974 2002 BMW.

And it's really cool.

So if you're there, vote for that.

Cool.

Yeah, Chicago car culture, and cities are like this, right?

LA has a very distinct culture, too, and then lots of cities do, but it evolves over time.

And at some point, the young people moving into that activity, into automotive love, sort

of push back on the stuff that used to be there.

Now, in the 90s, Chicago was all Honda Civics, like crazy tuned Honda Civics, and you would

often find like a Civic that has an Acura engine in it, and they would do the low rider

thing on those, or the severely canted wheels.

And you'd get cheaper guys that would just slap what we used to call fart cans on the

back of them, which would replace the muffler with a very small, yeah, they were just verbally

and loud.

But it was a great culture.

Actually, it was a lot of fun.

And that's changed since then.

And really big around here now, and I'm sure this is national, is what they call the JDM

movement, which is cars that you can now import from Japan from the 90s.

You can start importing those now legally, gray marketing them.

So you see those around here.

And in fact, there's a dealership on Rand Road, really close to the studio, that sells those,

including like the vans.

So really cool stuff.

All right.

Check town alley.

Pretty cool.

Later in the show, we're going to talk to Mark Lanieve.

He's a partner at Franchise Equity Partners.

Here's the interesting thing about that.

There's a lot going on in the world of dealerships, including huge acquisitions, trades, stuff

like that.

Mark's at the center of that.

So we're going to talk about that.

And what that means to consumers, ultimately, does that mean we're going to pay more, because

dealers are holding hands more tightly?

I don't know.

Interesting bit of news.

Maybe you saw this.

Nissan's got a big push to get back to selling a million cars again in the U.S.

They hiccuped.

Is that what you're going to call it, a hiccup?

It was a big hiccup, and they mishandled the part shortage, too, the chip shortage.

But here's a vehicle that I think there is a market for coming back.

The Nissan XTERRA, due back likely as a 2029 model.

For people who do not remember the XTERRA, it was briefly a huge hit.

But it was a body on frame, truck very much like the Toyota 4Runner.

And it had real off-road grit.

It was kind of cool looking, and people loved it.

So they're going to bring this back.

We don't know what it's going to look like, how much it's going to actually be a cool

body on frame, truck.

Don't know.

But I would anticipate if they're smart, which is debatable sometimes.

They will probably make it look very retro and close to the old.

Hopefully.

Fingerprints.

There was a really cool thing going on the roof, if you remember, where there was a cage

that came standard.

Like the kind of cage you would throw off-road tires on if you were in a rally.

Yeah.

And I had a friend who ran an old XTERRA in the Rebell rally last year.

How did that truck do?

I mean, it did okay.

If it held up, it held up.

It held up?

Yeah.

Funny that Jim would mention the CyberCab.

Because in our conversation of Tesla, we did not discuss the CyberCab.

But that vehicle, more or less going into production soon, it's going to be built at

the Austin factory, the Austin Gigafactory.

Here's the thing about that.

I forgot it in talking about future products coming from Tesla.

I don't know what the anticipated volume is for this thing.

And price is going to play a big role, too.

But one of the things that they don't have yet is full autonomous capability.

Right?

You mentioned there was a couple in Chicago.

I didn't know that, but they're going to be with drivers.

But there's no gas pedal or brake pedal.

There is no steering wheel.

There has to be some control because they're bringing right-alone drivers.

So you looked into the car and that stuff wasn't there.

On the show floor, it was not there.

And I do not know if the test cars that they have floating around Chicago have those things.

I was too focused on trying to figure out what in the heck, what in the Tesla it was

when I saw it on the roads.

The strangest thing about this, and listener Rich has cautioned me about slamming Tesla,

Hey, Rich, but this vehicle is a coupe, which is it only has two seats in it, too.

Very weird for a cab.

But I guess if you get to the point where there is no driver, right, then you can use

both front seats and you have a two passenger zip around kind of vehicle.

But it seems practically limited by that.

Well, so I was talking to there were a couple of product specialists on hand and I was just

like, okay, you got to give me the brief synopsis of this.

And the idea is that it will be a personally owned car like you're buying, you know, a Chevy

Tahoe or a, you know, Honda Civic, it's your car, you own it, but it will drive you to

and from work.

And then while you are at work, you know, the idea is that you could then loan it out

as a cab to other people.

So you're, you know, nine to five at an office and then you just like set it up to be a lift

and somebody can hail your, some random stranger, mind you, can hail your car and then make

you money while you are working another job.

This concept feels a decade old.

It feels like we talked about ride sharing before the electric car noise started.

Right.

And I don't know that people want other people driving around in their car, even for a little

money.

So it's weird and it's interesting, too, because they're not going to sell these two

ride hailing companies.

I mean, he did not say that they, like he specifically mentioned that it would be a

privately owned vehicle.

It's so weird.

Yeah.

It's so weird that that's the Tesla line.

So you were talking to a Tesla guy.

Yeah.

That's their take.

That I mean, that's what that Tesla guy told me.

Yeah.

Because Uber just wiped out the last of the eyepaces, the Jaguar eyepaces that were lying

around anywhere and they bought those.

It's a very weird car for them to use, but they are crossovers and kind of comfortable.

So why not?

All right.

That's weird.

I mean, it's weird and cool.

And I was so geeked out that I actually saw it on the road.

I have very, very bad photos through a very, like dirty windshield that you can see a gold

blob and you're like, oh, yeah, that's it.

Does it have like disc wheels?

Yeah.

I'm like, I'm putting a picture of it in my stories right now.

So you can, you can catch it in, in my stories on Instagram and Facebook.

Yeah.

And there are pictures on the Chicago auto show Facebook page.

Yeah.

And I can, I can share the photos I took and we can post those on our Facebook page.

All right.

Interesting story from Reuters, though other or the other outlets are talking about this.

One of the ways that Chinese companies might come into the U.S.

Okay.

Easily.

Yeah.

Is simply by tying up with an existing manufacturer.

The news here is that Ford and Geely are in talks for a manufacturing technology

partnership, which means that Ford's excess capacity could become Geely capacity,

which would make it really easy for Geely to start selling cars in the U.S.

They could even sell them as Fords.

You know, they don't have to sell them as Geely.

So interesting.

I don't know how that would be blocked by the federal government if they chose to

take issue with that.

But there you have it.

All right.

The Ultima is sticking around through 2027.

Yes.

All right.

That's it.

That's all I've got.

And my Stelvio review, you and I were going to talk about that car together, I

believe, wasn't that the deal we had with our Stellantis friends?

Yeah.

And you had the Intensa model too, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep.

In Verde Fangio, which is by far the craziest color I've driven in a long time.

Of the name?

Well, what's that guy's name?

Juan Manuel Fangio, the race car driver.

Yeah.

That was the livery of his race car going way back.

So, but it's green.

I thought it was really lovely green.

Oh, I don't know that I'd want that car.

There's that beautiful Alfa Rosa, the red.

I want that.

Okay.

I like, I like green.

You're wearing green today.

Just barely.

Yeah.

And that's green.

All right.

Just barely.

I'm taking your picture and I'm posting it.

That's green.

You, I'm a little upset by this.

Okay.

I'm not ready for this, but I know you just drove the new Subaru outback.

Yes.

New for 2026.

Yes.

And here's my problem with it.

I think when you walked in the studio today, you said they ruined it.

Yes.

That's your problem with it.

And that's based entirely on a quick visual take, but it no longer looks like a

station wagon.

No, it doesn't.

And that was the charm I thought of the Outback, that it was a station wagon,

that it had been beefed up for anything.

Okay.

I love the Outback.

I don't know if I love the new Outback, but I've always thought my wife and I

might buy an Outback and we are Subaru owners.

We're multi Subaru owners.

We've owned a Forester.

She owns a Cross Trek.

We believe in the Subaru doctrine, but you are driving the no longer a station

wagon, no longer a station wagon.

Do tell.

Uh, you know what, it's funny because I've been posting some pictures out into

social media and I'm getting a little bit of the same feedback that people are

very angst-ridden about the fact that it is no longer a wagon.

But I think it's really handsome.

I think it looks good.

It's got more upright stance, more cargo space because of the upright stance.

Um, you know, my Rebell partner was in town over the weekend with her husband and

I had like two big boxes in the trunk, their luggage and, um, everything fit.

Fine.

I could have put, put more back there.

So it tells me there is plenty of space back there for a full on, you know,

eight day road trip with four people and their luggage.

And so good cargo space, spare tire, I'm driving the limited XT trim.

Um, it has really nice, I mean, plain black interior.

But it's nice, it's functional.

Um, people who want to put gear or bikes or whatever in the back, you're not

going to scuff it up or get it dirty.

So that's nice.

The ride and handling is really nice.

So this has the 2.4 liter boxer engine.

So turbocharged four cylinder, 260 horsepower, 277 pound feet of torque.

And it is so peppy.

Um, it is so peppy that I am not getting the fuel economy that you should be getting.

I think I'm getting 20 miles per gallon.

And you should be getting, um, like, I want to say 24 and combined driving.

I'm not kidding.

But you were moving cargo around, right?

I was moving cargo and people.

I had people in things in there.

Well, you know, they sometimes do, I do not, but some people do.

Four people, 750, 800 pounds.

That's true.

I mean, my husband is 200 pounds.

So, um, he, he is, he's, he's a big in, um, but I, um, I loved it.

And I just, I feel very comfortable in it, good commanding driving position,

comfortable seats.

Um, I, I have very few complaints about it.

Then the technology is good.

You've got wireless apple carplay.

Instead of that long vertical screen that people hated, they've gone to more of a

square, like horizontal screen.

Yeah.

For people who don't know the, the screen was very much like what's in the Ram.

Yeah.

Actually that it's vertically oriented and huge.

Yes.

It was huge and everything was on it.

And it's still huge, um, but not everything is on it.

They've brought back physical buttons and dials.

And so that's a happy, a happy thing.

Um, there are some versions of the Outback that have, uh, hands-free driving.

The limited XT does not, I think it's just the touring and maybe the wilderness

that have the hands-free driving.

So I wasn't able to experience that, but the adaptive cruise control and

lane keep assist is really good.

Um, and, and I've found that the safety systems are not as annoying as they have

been, um, like sometimes you drive supers and it's like every, like somebody cuts

in front of you and it's like, and you like get a little bit close to the line.

It's like, and it's like, sorry, sorry for those people that I just broke your

ear drums, but, but it does a lot of beeping, um, in the previous models.

And I thought this was a little bit more restrained and, uh, a little bit more,

um, tolerable.

So you are more likely to leave the safety systems on.

So interesting stuff.

You mentioned the base engines, the two five, the upgrade engines, the two four

turbo, um, there were only six trim levels.

Now down from nine, uh, part of the reason for that probably is that the

hybrid's going to kick in soon.

Yes.

Super's got a hybrid version of the 2.5 that's in what it's in the

outback already and in the, um, not the outback, the cross-strek and the

forestry, I believe.

So we're going to see that elsewhere.

Prices range from 36, 445 to a big 49, 445 for the tour next T.

So I think that'll be the first non ascent, uh, to break 50 grand at Subaru.

Yeah.

And with any stuff.

And the version I'm driving, the limited XT is, um, about $45,000.

I think it's just more than 45 with destination.

So here's an interesting thing about this.

Uh, I do not like the fact that it does not look like a wagon, but in terms of

product strategy, it probably makes sense.

So the cross-strek, the forester in the outback, all selling big numbers, 192,000,

175,000, 157,000 in that order.

After that, things get slow and the ascent, their mid-sized, never discussed

mid-sized crossover only sells about 44,000.

So I think that they're pushing this up between where the car was and the ascent.

Yeah.

So that the forester plays the traditional role of a compact crossover.

And this is sort of becoming a mid-sized crossover.

Yeah.

I think that's what's happening here.

It's got the outback name.

So that's gold.

Um, so there's the stuff with hybrids coming to, uh, I did check.

It looks like the hybrids coming as a 20, 27 model.

Okay.

So we will see more models in that lineup as that happens.

And you know, for people who feel similarly to you, I would say, don't,

don't, don't just hate it by looking at photos.

Like go spend time with it and see it and drive it.

Um, but I mean, like I said, I'm people should jump to conclusions.

Yeah.

No, no jumping to conclusions.

I got a lot of, a lot of comments on social media of, um, un, unkind sentiments.

And I'm going to say you just need to give it a shot.

And, and once you drive it, like you may not care what it looks like.

I'm sure that it is actually a very good car.

I'm just a little bit hurt.

Okay.

I liked the old Outback.

Since the beginning, change happens, change happens and you need to get over it.

Yeah.

I guess so.

Uh, all right.

That's on sale now.

Yes.

All right.

We're going to take a break.

When we come back, we talked to Mark Lanneve of franchise equity partner.

Stick around.

Questions or comments?

Drop us a line at carstuff at consumerguide.com.

That's carstuff at consumerguide.com.

The Chicago Auto Show zooms into McCormick Place this February 7th through the 16th.

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Welcome back to the car stuff podcast and we're back.

This is the consumer guide car stuff podcast.

I'm Tom.

She is Jill.

How are you doing, Joe?

I'm doing very well.

Thank you.

You just marveled at the doughnuts.

I did.

They're cherry.

You had winced.

I had winced.

And now you're not wincing.

And now I'm not with this is a childhood favorite.

This brings back memories of my dad and going to Dunkin Donuts after church on Sundays.

Really?

Yeah, they smell good.

Yeah, this this makes me very happy.

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The doughnuts from Spunky Dunkers.

The cherry smell good, but those are seasonal and the blueberry smell fantastic.

All right.

You ready to talk a little bit about dealerships?

Yes, because I am on the phone with us is Mark Lanief.

He's a partner at franchise equity partners.

Mark, how are you today?

Technical difficulty.

Well, we will talk to Mark in a moment.

Yes, I was just talking about my experience at a dealer.

But we I didn't talk about this on a year in any area.

But my daughter had purchased just weeks ago, right?

A couple of months ago, a brand new Mazda CX 30.

She had a wreck.

Yeah, she's fine.

Yes, and it was not her fault.

But the car was totaled and like the car is not fine.

So I want to get back to the story when we have time.

But one of the interesting things was in the shopping experience was how the

dealership was handling this old 2020 25 content.

And it's very weird.

OK, they had four models listed available for sale.

All CX 30s, all carbon edition termos.

Identical cars with identical options, not very many options.

Mazda doesn't really do options.

One of them was three grand less than the others.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

TBD. Yeah, it's a very weird story.

But on the phone with us now is Mark Lanieve,

partner at franchise equity partners.

Mark, how are you today?

I'm doing great.

I apologize for that.

I was thinking about cherry doughnuts in it.

They look good.

I'm going to tell you what, Mark, you're not going to remember this,

but you and I spoke maybe 15 years ago.

I interviewed you at the I think it was the Chicago Auto Show.

But but no big deal.

You were with GM at the time.

Tom, you know, I recognize you and Jill's name.

So in all my years, you know, the names of the names stick with me pretty good.

So it's a pleasure to be on with you guys.

Well, thanks for joining us.

I know you're a busy man.

Mark, tell us a little bit about franchise equity partners and what you do there.

It's a really interesting concept when I retired from Ford,

which was in early 2021.

The two founding partners, Mike Esposito and Scott Romanoff,

they were two very senior Goldman Sachs execs that are retired in 2020.

And they they had a thesis wasn't even a company yet to.

And it was really based out of Mike is in his personal portfolio.

It had invested in some Jersey Mike sub shops in Boston.

And they started thinking about the kind of the franchisee sector of the US economy.

Car dealerships, fast food restaurants, beer distributors,

ships, health clubs, et cetera.

We could go on and on.

And they noticed a couple of things.

One, there was very little private equity, almost almost none in in auto,

a little bit in in restaurants.

But it wasn't it hadn't like become rampant like it has in other sectors

like banking and insurance and those kinds of things.

And that you have these great family, for the most part, family owned businesses.

Yeah, yeah.

Parenthood by great brands like Chevy, to Ford, to Toyota,

to Taco Bell, to Budweiser, you know, most encores, et cetera.

And and they had some natural, you know,

strengths in terms of, you know, protected market areas, the OEMs,

you know, had a real vested interest in making sure that they were successful.

So, you know, they did a lot of research and were able to receive funding

on a thesis from a company called HPS out in New York,

which has about well over now 200 billion under management that if we had capital

that wasn't traditional private equity.

In other words, we weren't trying to do a roll up and then liquidate

after five or six years, you know, to monetize the investment.

But we looked more like a family office where we could bring capital

that was flexible, that we were passive investors and that we were permanent,

that our money would stay in for, you know, forever is for as long as the

partners wanted it to that might have some appeal in the franchisey sector.

Because OEMs, I remember when I was running sales and marketing for GM,

I didn't want anything to do with private equity being part of it.

I wanted to deal with the families and, you know, I didn't want some bank

that I didn't know involved.

So, you know, we put together the thesis and received the funding

and the fund is now close to five years old or over 15 investments,

over a billion dollars invested.

We're starting on our next billion.

Three of those 15 are in auto with the most recent being Roger Penske,

juniors, I saw the California platform.

Then I'm sure we'll get to that.

And it's been it's been a great, you know, kind of post OEM career,

you know, job for me because I could do it from home.

I stay involved with dealers.

I stay current with the industry.

And and I'm learning some about some of these other sectors we're involved in.

So it's been a lot of fun and we're getting more and more interest.

And we can we can talk about that because the car dealerships are becoming

so valuable now that it's very difficult to come up with, you know,

either debt funding or, you know, just family wealth to afford, you know,

to grow.

So we're, we think we're hitting the market at a real sweet spot.

We were at NADA last week at a ton of interest.

People are starting to really know who we are.

The OEMs understand and think that we can help with their objective.

So I'm enjoying it, you know, it's it's a feel very blessed that I'm involved.

So so, Mark, what is driving the increased value of dealerships?

Right.

There are these mega groups now, Lithia, Penske, AutoNation, Group One,

and Asbury, these huge groups of dealers.

And those are all public, I believe.

Is it because they've decided or that that industry, the industry in general

is determined that dealerships are probably sweet spots for maybe squeezing

a little bit more value out of them than there were.

People didn't want to get into the business until they realized it's super profitable.

Yeah, you know, it's it's funny is, you know, I started in 1981.

So, you know, 45 years ago, calling on on dealerships actually started

with Cadillac Division and in Los Angeles, California.

And the model, a lot of retail industries have changed dramatically

or many have just gone away.

If you think of like bookstores are a good example.

But the car dealership model, it's evolved greatly, but it's still

consistent with 45 years ago.

And why has it had that kind of staying power?

Because you've got local entrepreneurs and families vested in the community.

They they put up, you know, up to date, nice facilities.

They they attract good people, train them.

And if you go into a really good dealership, I guarantee you, you'll meet

a dozen people that have been there 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.

And the dealership's been around from grandfather to father to son.

And and they and they take a financial and customer

execution burden off of the OEMs with a local touch.

And, you know, I was fascinated when Tesla came out.

I was at I was at Ford Motor Company's head of sales and marketing

when it came out with the direct consumer model.

And I think to some extent that has its place.

But, you know, if you fully get to scale and volume and you have to build

out service facilities to take care of all these customers and all these units

in operation, I don't I've studied extensively.

I don't see where that's more efficient or better for the consumer than

having, you know, independent franchise dealers that are monitored

and work in conjunction with the OEMs.

I just think it's a great model that stood the test of time.

So when a group acquires a dealership, how does that dealership change?

So you've got, you know, Bob, Bob Smith's Buick and then it's taken over

by a larger group. Does much about that business change?

Well, it's just it depends on who the acquirer is and who the dealer is.

If you if you have a dealer retiring and that's kind of the case right now

where the average age of the U.S. auto dealer has got to be close to 70 years old.

Oh, you know, do they do they have children coming into the business

or don't they are they retiring or they want to stay with the business or

their people want to stay? And it just depends, Tom, like when the one

that when the big public companies say an auto nation buys a store, then they'll

come in, they'll retain a lot of the people, but they impose a new system.

You know, they run it like a company, you know, where they have very consistent

processes across all their couple hundred dealerships or whatever it is that they

own where they'll come in with a new system.

And then you go all the way to our case where we don't want to own a majority

position. We'd like to be forty nine and a half percent or below our number one

criteria is we want to align with the best operators.

And that's real simple because we're not going to operate.

We're investors. We're in the background. We're passive.

So we want to align with really good operators that continue to do a return.

We don't get a guaranteed coupon or payment.

We go up and down with the performance of the individual dealer.

So we're very interested when we make an investment to get to know the operator.

His or her key people really understand the location, the market they're serving

because, you know, we're passive investors and it just depends.

So like in our case, very little changes or nothing changes at the dealership.

In the case of, say, an acquisition by one of the big public companies,

potentially a lot could change.

So if somebody is interested in like creating a dealer franchise,

but they need a little help, is that when you step in and help them out?

And like, what what does that look like?

How would somebody reach out to you for investment?

Well, Joe, it's it's really hard right now with the value of dealerships

for an individual investor to to come into the business.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's unusual.

And, you know, because if you say if you're a, you know,

a salesperson or a general manager at a dealership and you're looking to buy a,

you know, Chevrolet store that's profitable, I mean, at a minimum,

you're going to pay, you know, five to ten million dollars blue sky, even a small market.

And I'm I'm I'm singling out, said it could be Ford or Honda or any of the major players.

And plus, there's real estate involved.

Now, it can be done.

And in some cases, we're working with OEMs, where they have a promising

young general manager that they'd like to become a dealer.

And we would provide some of that capital for them to to, you know,

become the owner operator with a with a buyout over time.

And, you know, we're working with several OEMs that are interested in us

assisting them in that regard that we met with several last week at the NADA

convention. That's that's not really our sweet spot, but we'll do it.

Our sweet spot is more if you have a dealer group has, say,

10 dealerships in our first two investments were identical to what I'm going to describe.

And say those those 10 dealerships are worth a hundred million dollars.

And the dealer wants to buy another group of dealers, say, five more

that cost 50 million, but doesn't want to finance the whole thing on on,

you know, on, you know, through debt with with a bank.

We'll come in, we'll come in, we'll write the check for the 50 million

and then we spread it to end up at roughly 33 percent of the 15 dealerships.

If I'm just giving you real simple math for the way that it worked.

And and that's more typical of the kind of investment we'll do.

And in Roger Penske's case, he had a partner.

He had a partner that that had passed, unfortunately.

And the widow wanted to sell her interest.

And we provided the capital to to take care of the widows

of his former partner's interest and, you know, and then took a piece

of each of the of the stores involved in the Southern California platform.

So each situation is a little bit different.

But our primary uses are to help a dealer grow, acquire more.

We provide the capital to acquire more dealerships

to take out a disinterested investor, a family member, or,

you know, somebody that owns owns an equity stake in the dealership,

but doesn't really want to be involved anymore.

Or, you know, you've got you've got those two or to help a dealer really

just just take chips off the table where, you know, hey, look,

I have worked my whole life.

I own these 10 dealerships are worth a hundred million dollars.

I like to sell 25 percent and take 25 million off the table

and then dust another things or build a hospital or wherever they want.

They may want to do when we've talked to people and made investments

in all those areas.

So it's it's it's exciting and a lot of fun.

So, Mark, you mentioned something interesting earlier after Jill's question.

You suggested that it's not common for people to get into the business anymore

just because it's expensive and perhaps a number of franchises is capped by by

manufacturers. So this is my question.

Is there really just a finite number of dealerships now

and there's not really going to be more?

Well, Tom, everybody for the most part will certainly GM, Ford and Chrysler

have been consolidating for 30 years.

We saw that was Cadillac. Yeah.

You know, when I was when I started at GM, we probably had

six thousand dealerships.

And by the time I left in 2009, it was probably more like thirty five hundred.

I'm close. I'm close on those numbers because scale, the thing is, the scale matters.

So if you're in, if you've got one dealership, if you're a single owner

and one dealership and there's plenty of those around the country to do a terrific job

and you're in a major market, if you've got, if you're competing with

other dealers that own five, six, seven, eight dealerships, it's difficult

because the the scale operators got

first of all, they can roll up their ad budgets in the internet departments,

which is a big deal. They can make those all common.

You know, and say, but what we call back office to the five or six stores,

they've got career pathing where they can take, you know, their their their talent

of young employees and move them from salesman salesperson at one place

to sales manager at another place, a general manager in another place.

And they get some diversity usually across brands.

They own several different kinds of brands.

So as you guys know from fall in the industry, not every brand strong every year.

You know, cycles summer down with the product cycle.

It comes back, et cetera.

So there are scale advantages, a really good operator that owns one store

will always have a place in the business, but they are becoming fewer and fewer of

those as as, you know, the the public companies and the big dealer operators

continue to roll up and we're part of that process.

We provide capital to help that process.

Mark, we're running out of time, but I do have a question for you.

You had mentioned that you guys are quiet partners, silent partners, and that

you take up to half or just under half.

Does that mean that you really acquire only like dealerships or dealership

groups that you find to be in really good shape, essentially, you don't buy

into fixer uppers? Correct, Tom.

That's a really good question because, like I said, we don't operate.

Now, we provide, we have an analytics department.

We have a data science department.

You've got myself and several other partners that have automotive experience

where we can certainly help out and we have, but we don't, but we don't operate.

So we align with really good operators.

However, once we're partnered with them, we do like to go out and buy fixer

uppers together. So our first, our very first investments at the Georgia

Auto Group in the Northeast, it kind of goes from Philadelphia up through

Danbury, Connecticut and 17 rooftops, I believe, all together.

Since we formed that partnership four years ago, we've bought six additional

stores together and we bought at a pro rate of portion.

So that roughly when we buy a new store, John Sobel, the dealer operator,

by 60% and we buy 40%.

But they have all been, for the most part, fixer uppers or at least

stores where we thought we could improve the overall performance and sales

and profitability and customer satisfaction.

So we love to spend the profitability of the dealership on growth rather

than just distributions.

We find that very exciting and very good model for our business.

Really cool. Mark, we are flat out of time.

Tell people how they can find out more about FEP.

We have a website, Franchise Equity Partners, and it is, you can just

Google it and find information.

And like I said, it'll provide information on how to get ahold of us.

And, you know, there are basic thesis of our company and how to get it.

And then you can certainly get ahold of me, my work email is complicated.

You can reach me, it's real easy.

It's my name, Mark Leneve, M-A-R-K-L-A-N-E-V-E at iCloud.com.

Get ahold of me and I promise you I'll get back to you.

We will share that in our show notes.

Mark, thank you so much for your time today.

Pleasure speaking with you all. Thank you.

Thank you. That was Mark Leneve with FEP.

We're going to take a break.

And when we come back, quiz time.

Questions or comments?

Drop us a line at carstuffatconsumerguide.com.

That's carstuffatconsumerguide.com.

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Welcome back to the CarStuff Podcast and we are back.

This is the Consumer Guide CarStuff Podcast.

I'm Tom. She is Jill.

I love stuff like that.

You know, it's just kind of interesting to like get a peek behind the curtain.

Yeah. And then you have this group.

It's not even a dealer group.

It's a group investing in dealer groups and it's helping them in some ways consolidate.

So there's an outside force driving even additionally driving this consolidation.

Because you mentioned the average dealer is like 70 years old now.

The dealer principle.

And I think that increasingly the family is not interested anymore.

I think that these, these groups that have been in families since the 20s, the 30s,

the 40s is really the old legacy franchises.

I think the youngsters not so interested.

I think maybe.

And then if they want to get out, you know, here's, here's some money.

Yeah. Go away.

Bye.

All right.

You probably want to talk a little bit about social media.

Just a little bit.

A little bit.

Just a little bit.

Yeah.

So I'm on social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, threads,

blue sky, all the things you can find me at Jill Siminello.

And I use the hashtag car du jour.

So do you, J-O-U-R.

Yes, that's French.

I feel the need to spell it out because I guess for me, like I like soup to

jure soup the day.

And so it just made logical sense because I drive different cars every day to

call it car to jure.

And people are like, what's du jour?

I don't think I've seen a menu with soup to jure on it in 20 years.

I must be going to different restaurants than you do.

I remember it was a really big deal.

Right.

When I was a kid, my parents and my, and my grandmother, they'd go to a lot of

small restaurants and it was like a thing.

It was like the first thing.

And of course you had to ask.

What is your soup to jure?

And it was always matzah ball.

Uh, well.

So that, so now you know what side of the city we were on.

Right.

Well, so I have to say, one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago is Alps

Pancake House.

It's in the Irving Park neighborhood.

Yeah.

And, um, on Saturdays, they have the best lentil soup.

Yeah.

And, um, I was there yesterday and I was like, what's your soup today?

And they're like, well, it's chicken and wild rice.

And I was like, mm.

You've been in Chicago along.

Do you remember the, uh, the Alps West?

It was further west on Irving Park.

It was called the Alps West.

Okay.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I remember that.

I don't know if I've ever been to the Alps.

I feel like I should have sobered up there at some point.

I don't know how long it has been.

Wasn't it 24 hours or was it once?

No, no, no.

It's, it's only open.

At least now it's only open until like two.

It's just a breakfast place.

And, um, but it's like at the corner of Irving Park and, um, Elston and is it

Monticello maybe?

I don't know.

But it's, it's a six corner area, but yeah, lentil soup, the soup to jure.

Is there still the salted and pepper diner down there?

No.

Oh, that was hippie.

That was hipster.

Yeah.

Well, I think a couple of the waitresses owned a new, opened a new restaurant

called Salt.

Oh.

Um, and I've been there and that's right off of Oz Park in Lincoln Park area.

I want to say it's called Salt.

Oh, I'm tired of single names, single, it's a good breakfast place.

Yeah.

How many restaurants are called fork?

There's like 90 or spoon.

Yeah.

All right.

It's quiz time.

Okay.

Wait, did you get through that, that stuff?

Yes.

Josephinello Cartagior.

That was the whole cartagior.

And I am Car Guy Tom on blue sky and Twitter, Twitter.

Thank you.

I got you.

All right.

It's quiz time.

Ah, I got a topic for you here that I'm sure you're going to love.

Um, which means I'm going to hate it.

Was it a pickup truck?

Okay.

Good to give you five models.

Okay.

You have to tell me if it's fake or not.

Okay.

You ready?

I am ready.

I think you know, I think you know the first one.

The Chevrolet Love, L-U-V, Chevrolet Love.

Was it a real pickup truck?

I feel like we've talked about it and I promptly forgot all about it.

I'm going to say yes.

It was.

Yeah.

Available between 1972 and 1982.

The Love light utility vehicle was built for Chevrolet by a Suzu.

It was one of the first really high volume small pickup trucks sold in the US.

Okay.

I think they were pretty good too.

All right, you've got one.

The Ford Sprinter.

I know.

You had the like the Dodge Sprinter and the Mercedes Sprinter and those were both vans.

And a Freightliner Sprinter for a little while.

I feel like you're putting this in here to throw me off.

And the answer is probably yes, but I'm going to say no.

No.

Oh, all right.

You're on the board.

Yeah, there was no Ford Sprinter.

I got two.

All right, the Mercury M100.

Pickup truck.

Real or fake?

Did Mercury have a pickup truck?

So I didn't take a picture of it, but yesterday in the Alps parking lot, there was.

Where else?

There was an old Mazda.

Was it like B200 pickup truck?

Yeah, the B series trucks.

They were on for a long time.

The end of the B series, the last generation were all Rangers.

Just rebadged.

Yep.

Funny story about that.

The Ranger was available in a lot of configurations, an extended cab, a regular

cab, long bed, a short bed, three different engines, two transmissions and a bunch

of colors, and then trim levels.

Mazda dealers had no idea what to do with this.

Mazda, when they sold pickups earlier, far fewer configurations.

So they didn't know how to order, you know, and they didn't, they had no

idea what people in their area would want because they'd never had this kind

of choice before.

Kind of messed with the dealers.

Yeah.

They was too much available.

Yep.

Uh, okay.

Mercury M100.

Um, I don't, I don't know if Mercury had a pickup truck.

I'm going to say no.

Yes.

It's a bit of a trick question.

It was a Canadian product and we've talked about, we've talked about Canadian

dealership situations before, but usually because there were fewer dealers spread

out more, they often took on a high end or low end product line thing to kind

of compensate for the lack of dealership representation.

Anyway, Mercury dealers started selling pickup trucks in Canada, the M100,

uh, between 1948 and 1968.

And I once saw at Superdog, Chicago's legendary Superdog, I saw an M100.

Okay.

Uh, it was beautiful.

It was black and it's funny because it looked just like F-series pickups, but

with more chrome, which is totally unnecessary.

Yeah.

Uh, so you got that one wrong.

I did.

All right.

I got two.

All right.

The Asuzu Ombre.

H-O-M-B-R-E.

H-O-M-B-R-E?

Ombre.

Yes, that.

Ombre.

Um, Azuzu?

Azuzu.

Mmm.

Ombre.

Not to be confused with ombre, which is a hair thing.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Women, when you like kind of like gradually lighten the tips of your hair,

that's ombre.

Okay.

Ombre.

Oh.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, I just forgot that.

Just like, I don't know if the Azuzu Ombre is a truck or not.

I'm going to say yes.

It was between 1996 and 2000 in the US.

It was just a rebad Chevy S10 pickup.

All right.

So you've got three of four.

You've already won the Nissan hard body.

That sounds like something they would do.

I'm going to say like it's not a name, but yes, I'm going to say yes.

It kind of wasn't a name.

I think they advertised it as the hard body, but I think maybe it might have

just been called Nissan pickup, but it was available between 1985 and 1997.

And they absolutely called it that.

It's advertising.

Okay.

So I was right.

So I got four out of five.

The hard bodies, the hard bodies kind of a cool modular look.

Okay.

You would recognize it if you saw it, but maybe didn't know was called the hard

body.

All right.

Um, bonus question.

Right.

And I just have to say, if I had not gotten the ones that I had gotten, my

uh, previous, uh, co-worker, Tim Estradaugh from pickup truck plus SUV talk

would have been very upset.

Probably.

All right.

You're, uh, you're into cooking.

I am actually you're into cooking.

I have a cooking question for you here.

Do you, do you cook Chinese much?

Uh, we do, we do like stir fry Sundays occasionally stir fry Sunday.

This might come up then.

Are you ready?

Um, okay.

Which of the following is not typically one of the elements of Chinese

five species, five spice blends.

Ooh, okay.

Are you ready?

Star anise, anise, white pepper, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, or fennel seeds.

One of those not.

I think it's the pepper.

The white pepper.

No, no, no.

What the, the shish one.

Yeah.

That one.

The shish one pepper.

You think that's not part of it?

Yeah.

It is.

White peppers, the fake, uh, cloves would be the fifth thing.

Yeah.

So like, cause I actually have five spice, um, at home.

And I remember thinking it would be like a spicy five spice thing.

And then I was like, wait a minute.

This has an anise and cinnamon and like cloves.

It is a total cheat.

If you want something to taste Chinese.

Yeah.

Just buy a jar of this and just plop it on anything.

But, but it was Chinese waffles.

Just sprinkle this on.

Yeah.

But I, I thought it was weird because there are things that I would

associate with as sweet.

That are in this and I would have thought it would have been completely spicy.

But yeah.

So star anise, cloves, cinnamon, shish one pepper and fennel seeds.

Okay.

So the white pepper was the fake.

All right.

There we go.

Okay.

Um, a couple of things I wanted to talk about.

I want to talk about this carbine thing.

Yeah.

I was like, we got to get back to your to be continued.

So we have a couple of minutes here.

My daughter and I, Thursday, went to a dealership.

They advertised four versions of the exact car she had, but one year

newer.

Okay.

So she bought a 20, 24, 20, she had a 20, 24.

That got wrecked.

Yeah.

Now we're looking at 20, 25s.

Okay.

And they had four 20, 25 exactly this car.

It's been discontinued.

That's the CX 30, um, carbon edition turbo.

Right.

That's gone.

There's something replacing it called the air edition.

Okay.

Decidedly more feminine.

It's got a white and blue interior, but it is a turbo.

Okay.

So the turbos are at the premium end of the lineup, obviously.

Um, so they advertised four of these vehicles.

Three of them were listed for 31, 495.

One of them was listed for 28, 495.

The 28, 495 had 15 miles on it.

So I'm texting them and I'm like, yeah, you want it?

And I want to be sure because why is this $3,000 less?

Right.

With 15 miles on it.

Is there no dashboard?

Does it only have three wheels?

Like what is wrong?

Has it already been in an accident?

With this car.

And for whatever reason, the people I spoke to on the phone

and that I was texting didn't seem to understand my...

The question?

Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's it.

Why, why are you asking questions?

I'm like, cause it's three grand less.

Yeah.

So we go to the store, it's there.

We test drive it.

It doesn't seem like there had been a bad fire in it or anything.

Okay.

We come back and I get, I get the, um, the car facts.

I'm asking questions like this car was never in Iraq.

It's perfectly cool.

Here's the story.

And I guess I believe it.

They, this dealership puts a lot of cars into their, to their loaner fleet.

Okay.

Those become what they call, you know, um, um, loaners, you know, they, they

sell them for us.

Something happens to somebody's car.

They loan that out.

Yeah.

So this one never got used.

Okay.

They put it in a loaner fleet.

They never used it.

And now it's a used car.

Okay.

And it's part of the way they write off the taxes and the way

the mausoleum versus for loaners.

And it was just this really weird anomaly that they never use.

And I'm like, and I can have this like for $28,000, I can have this.

Yeah.

Like three grand less than the other cars.

And the weird thing is it's now certified pre-owned, which means that at 15

miles, they changed the oil.

Well, you know, they need to do that at 15 miles.

They need to do it.

If they call it certified pre-owned as part of that deal.

So yeah, I mean, this all worked out spectacularly well for us.

But I guess the moral of the story is like, if you have time, just do a lot of

shopping.

Yeah.

Just to figure out what, because this wasn't me being a crafty buyer.

This was me stumbling onto this crazy deal that was real for some reason.

I still feel like there's like something surprising here, like the back seat.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And then you've got the trunk monkey in the back or something like that.

He's going to hit people over the head with a crowbar.

You know what my takeaway of this is?

Your daughter liked the CX 30 enough that she bought another one.

Yeah.

No, she loves the car.

I love the car.

It's so glad she liked it.

It's secretly very, very fast for one thing.

That two, five turbo was crazy, but it's also really well screwed together.

And the interior, when a lot of reviewers compare these vehicles to other cars,

they compare them to things like the BMW X1 or the Mini Countryman.

That's because the interior is so nice.

Real leather, screwed together nicely.

Everything's great about it.

And she, she got super used to the weird center knob thing right away.

Okay.

Not an issue.

The touch controller.

Yeah.

Okay.

So here's, here's the question of the day.

Did she get a color that she likes better?

That is only offered in one color.

Okay.

It's a weird clay.

I think they call it mica, sand, mica, mica, sand or zircon.

Okay.

So it's the same color.

It's the same color.

There was only one color for the carbon addition.

Okay.

So the carbon addition was weird anyway, because it was just, it was a, like a

kind of sporty entry level turbo in the middle of their lineup.

It was the cheapest way to get into a turbo.

They've gotten rid of it now and there's something replacing it called the air

addition.

Okay.

Did I say this on air?

I don't think I did.

I think you did.

It's very feminine.

With a blue and white interior.

Blue and white interior.

And that's the only interior, but you do get the turbo.

Otherwise you have to step up to the premium, whatever, top trim level, which is 40 grand.

It's a lot of money for a, a compact, for a subcompact crossover.

Yeah.

But they're really great cars.

Standard oil will drive.

So that's the deal.

Um, yeah, I'd like to take credit for this, but absolutely fell into it.

I was just poking around on their website and I would take the other moral of this

story is if you're looking for a new car and you're looking for a deal, apparently

go buy a Mazda CX 30.

Oh, you know what else?

This is the slow time of the year sales wise, January, February, March.

It's not sales don't pick up until people start to get their, um, income

tax, right, um, returns.

And then all of a sudden they have a down payment, right?

That's when sales start to pick up and then you get into summer and summer is a

hot sales season.

So this is a good time to buy a car anyway, because dealers aren't moving a

lot of stuff.

If there are leftover 20, 25s, they're keen to get rid of them.

So it's a good time to go look for a car right now.

Right now.

Yeah.

I know a lot of people rush at the end of the year.

Don't do that.

Well, you can, right?

Cause you have the end of the month thing.

That is actually a real thing.

Salesmen do try to crime it more stuff at the last minute.

So there you have it.

That's my sales story.

Okay.

All right.

That's all I got.

I like it.

It's a good story.

Guess what we did.

We had an amazing show as always.

Good show.

Thank you to Mark Lanieve of FEP.

Oh, thank you, Jill.

Thank you.

Thank you to producer Randy and the good folks here at TalkZone.

Let's talk more about cars again next week, next week.

Remember to check us out at consumerguide.com.

The Car Stuff podcast is produced by J-Turn Media.

To advertise on the show, please drop us a line at carstuffatconsumerguide.com.

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