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Jim Lake, CEO of Vern Eide Motorcars and chairman of the Honda National Dealer Advisory Board, said the Honda product lineup is the best it's been since he became a dealer more than 30 years ago.
But while the average Honda dealer is prospering, Lake said some regional economies -- including his -- lag the rest of the country.
That's no reflection on Honda, he said, but it means you can't assume all Honda dealers are prospering equally.
Vern Eide Motorcars is based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The group has seven dealerships in South Dakota and Minnesota, including two Honda stores. It also has two motorcycle stores and a stand-alone used-car lot.
Lake, 57, said he worked his way up in dealerships, from a job as a salesman right out of college. He said he learned the trade from Frank Stinson, a dealer who founded Dallas-based Roundtree Automotive Group, and the late Vern Eide, the namesake of Vern Eide Motorcars.
Special Correspondent Jim Henry spoke with Lake.
Q: How was 2016 for Honda dealers, and what's the outlook for 2017?
A: What I understand, from talking to all the Honda dealers I come in contact with, is that overall Honda dealers are pretty blessed with the product lineup Honda is providing us. Whether it's a great year for an individual dealer, that's a little bit of a regional thing, not that that's got anything to do with Honda per se, but with local economies.
2016 was a record sales year. Dealers must be happy.
To answer the question nationally, I think everybody's pretty happy. As chairman, I sat through the NADA [dealer satisfaction] survey presentation, and the scores there would also say the Honda dealer body is pretty happy.
How about your own local economy? I hear analysts worrying about regions that depend on the energy industry. Does that include you?
We're directly affected. Sioux Falls itself, the metro area is banking and health care. But our general economy -- and this is true for North Dakota and South Dakota, but particularly North Dakota -- they say around here, "They turned the oil on a few years ago, and now they turned it off." That, and local agricultural prices, that's something everybody is aware of.