Pub. 5 Issue 3

14 Issue 1 2020 LA Car Dealers Get Green Light City Clarifies, OKs Resumption of Online Car Sales BY MEDIHA DIMARTINO PREVIOUSLY PRINTED IN THE LA BUSINESS JOURNAL MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2020 Longo Toyota Service Valet Jayden Hernandez follows safe ty protocols to clean vehicles. Confusion about the intent of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s revised Safer at Home order prompted some 70 auto dealers with Los Angeles addresses to cease all sales for weeks while other retailers pivoted to ecommerce. The March 19 order to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the city clas- sified “auto repair shops that operate adjacent to or otherwise in connection with a used or retail auto dealership” as essential businesses. An April 1 revi- sion included an additional stipulation that “no auto dealership may operate, with the exception of its auto service and part stores.” Los Angeles County issued similar guidance, also designating auto repair shops as essential businesses but did not tack on the sentence that calls out auto dealership operations. “After March 19th, because the or- der was kind of confusing, some dealers were doing ‘by appointment’ deliveries in showrooms,” said Bob Smith, an executive director of the Greater Los Angeles New Car Dealers Association. “And when the officials responded with the April 1 order, it was supposed to clarify that all showroom sales to public by appointment (must stop). When they rewrote the order, they didn’t clarify about online sales. They just didn’t go into that detail.” Calls to the mayor’s office from indi- vidual dealers and the association led to an April 15 clarification that online car sales were never meant to be interrupted. That step was “very meaningful to the dealers in the city” Smith said because it aligns the mayor’s order with similar orders from L.A. County and the state. “It creates uniformity,” he said, adding that dealers will “continue to work with health officials and support whatever protocols are needed to ensure what is safe for all.” Slow going Bringing furloughed sales employ- ees back to work, however, will be a “slow process.” “The dealers that I talked to are all saying that they are transacting be- tween zero and five cars a day doing online remote delivery only,” he said. “So, if that’s how slow the business is, there won’t be an immediate need to scale up quickly.” Mike Sullivan, the second-genera- tion owner of 12 dealerships under the LACarGuy umbrella, said their sales departments are about to “reopen on a very, very limited basis,” and “100% online, including signatures.” “It has to be a home delivery,” Sul- livan said. “They cannot come into our showroom, they cannot congregate, they cannot come down and take a test drive, and they cannot wander the lot with a salesperson — nothing that feels like business as usual can be done in L.A. County, L.A. city, period.”  GREEN LIGHT — continued on page 15