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You almost need a map to get around this car mall
Sixteen brands...all in one location...each with an unshakable one-price/no-haggle policy. For Lujack's Northpark Auto Plaza, serving the Quad Cities from Davenport, IA, accumulation of as many as 16 lines on a single campus would seem to be challenge enough.
"Sure, running the largest privately owned auto mall in number of brands is a big point of pride," asserts President Peter G. Pohlmann. "But I'm prouder that the one-price strategy we introduced with Saturn nine years ago has worked for all the 15 other franchises, too, including those competing with dealers in the Quad Cities."
Mr. Pohlmann says consolidation and oneprice selling works better in a concentrated market, like Davenport, than for multibranders spread too far apart.
"Right from the start of my 27 years here, I've disliked the age-old dealer system in which the best customers always wound up paying the highest prices," says Mr. Pohlmann. "But when Saturn came along in 1990 with its one-price reforms, which applied to F&I as well as to car sales, I saw how pleased our customers were and decided this was the way to go on all our other nameplates."
Mr. Pohlmann, 51, says the far-ranging reputation attained by the Lujack mall for one-price "integrity" helped attract new brands to its hilly 40-acre location on the western edge of Davenport
The steady expansion mode, which Mr. Pohlmann says he plans to continue, has brought with it state-of-the-art facilities for service, body shop and used-vehicle reconditioning. The newest of a seemingly constant flow of building projects is a totally refurbished sales building for six of Lujack's "high line" franchises - Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Porsche and Volkswagen. Lexus, another luxury brand,...