Where are you Gator Motorsport???

[s2kmunpo]

Has anyone been able to contact Tony or anyone else at @GatorMotorsport? Several of us have been trying to reach them over the past few weeks through emails and phone calls to get some info on if they have received our emiras yet, however no emails are responded to and no calls are returned. Last correspondence from them was December 1st about ppf costs. Hoping it's just a holiday thing where people are on vacation but it's very uncharacteristic of them to ghost their customers like this.

 

[DerTheDer]

Called numerous times with nobody picking up over the last two weeks. Like most businesses I am sure the owner gave the staff off from 24 DEC -2 JAN. But with the Emiras inbound it makes sense to pull em back in a few days this week to triage phone calls and such....

Overall Gator has been spot on and Tony has been great, so no need to worry yet.

 

[Nba19002]

I called and emailed several times over the past week or two since submitting my preferences for PPF/Ceramic upon Gator receiving my car but have not heard back. I received a callback today from Gator that barely rang once and then went to voicemail, but no voicemail was left. I called back and spoke to a gentleman (not sure his name) who said Tony had just stepped out and would call me back...currently waiting for a call back from Tony. My guess is staff may be working limited hours until the New Year. Also, I am guessing Gator has not received any of the Emiras yet; I imagine we would have heard from Gator if they did receive our cars.

 

[s2kmunpo]

Thanks. I'm assuming holidays as well. Typically if you will not be reachable for weeks though it's pretty easy to have out of office responses or messages that inform your customers when they call. Again, typically they are very responsive and forthcoming with news so it has just been a little odd.

 

[DerTheDer]

Thanks. I'm assuming holidays as well. Typically if you will not be reachable for weeks though it's pretty easy to have out of office responses or messages that inform your customers when they call. Again, typically they are very responsive and forthcoming with news so it has just been a little odd.

I agree it has been odd. Especially since the Emira were enroute......

 

[Nba19002]

Update - I just spoke with Tony on the phone. Gator pushed back taking possession of the Emiras. Per the explanation I received from Tony - this was due to a variety of factors. He did not go into much detail other than mentioning that Gator has a lot going on/has been very busy. He confirmed that the cars are being stored indoors at Lotus HQ in Detroit. He expects the Emiras to start trickling into Gator next month (January). He is under the impression that CARB cert will still happen in January as he hasn't heard otherwise. He also mentioned that he thought the CARB office/personnel was closed/off this week.

As to why Gator is not taking possession of the Emiras, I am not sure. I understand when most dealers take delivery of a car or multiple cars, they have to finance that inventory until it is sold, which is referred to as floor planning. This functions like a line of credit that needs to be paid off by the car dealers. Maybe once these Emiras hit the dealers, the dealer is on the hook for paying for the cars until they are sold..if that is the case, I could see why a dealer would want to delay taking possession as they cannot sell the cars right now so would not want to tie up capital or credit lines while CARB approval is still in process.

 

[DerTheDer]

Update - I just spoke with Tony on the phone. Gator pushed back taking possession of the Emiras. Per the explanation I received from Tony - this was due to a variety of factors. He did not go into much detail other than mentioning that Gator has a lot going on/has been very busy. He confirmed that the cars are being stored indoors at Lotus HQ in Detroit. He expects the Emiras to start trickling into Gator next month (January). He is under the impression that CARB cert will still happen in January as he hasn't heard otherwise. He also mentioned that he thought the CARB office/personnel was closed/off this week.

As to why Gator is not taking possession of the Emiras, I am not sure. I understand when most dealers take delivery of a car or multiple cars, they have to finance that inventory until it is sold, which is referred to as floor planning. This functions like a line of credit that needs to be paid off by the car dealers. Maybe once these Emiras hit the dealers, the dealer is on the hook for paying for the cars until they are sold..if that is the case, I could see why a dealer would want to delay taking possession as they cannot sell the cars right now so would not want to tie up capital or credit lines while CARB approval is still in process.

Does not sound to good honestly.......finance the cars for what, 2 months till they are CARB legal? These emiras will pack people into their dealership and allow for more deposits.

We're they unable to obtain financing? I don't think the floor plan is the issue here.

 

[Nba19002]

Does not sound to good honestly.......finance the cars for what, 2 months till they are CARB legal? These emiras will pack people into their dealership and allow for more deposits.

We're they unable to obtain financing? I don't think the floor plan is the issue here.

The second paragraph of my update was pure speculation. I know Gator recently expanded its facility as well as its used car department..two capital/credit-intensive moves. If you look at their site, they have quite a few used cars that have been sitting/not selling, not unlike many other car dealerships right now. Unless they're purchasing their entire inventory outright, they're accruing interest expense on their existing stock. The elevated Federal Funds rate has imposed a higher interest expense on floor-planned inventory, leading to the question: why would a car dealer increase their inventory and consequently their interest expense for cars they’re not allowed to sell? - That was the basis for my conjecture.

Your point about increasing dealership capacity and securing more deposits is logical, but what if the current demand is already at its peak or even exceeding it? Lotus is unable to deliver within a reasonable timeframe, which might deter dealers from accepting more deposits due to the challenge of managing expectations..just proposing a few "devil's advocate" ideas.

 

[DerTheDer]

The second paragraph of my update was pure speculation. I know Gator recently expanded its facility as well as its used car department..two capital/credit-intensive moves. If you look at their site, they have quite a few used cars that have been sitting/not selling, not unlike many other car dealerships right now. Unless they're purchasing their entire inventory outright, they're accruing interest expense on their existing stock. The elevated Federal Funds rate has imposed a higher interest expense on floor-planned inventory, leading to the question: why would a car dealer increase their inventory and consequently their interest expense for cars they’re not allowed to sell? - That was the basis for my conjecture.

Your point about increasing dealership capacity and securing more deposits is logical, but what if the current demand is already at its peak or even exceeding it? Lotus is unable to deliver within a reasonable timeframe, which might deter dealers from accepting more deposits due to the challenge of managing expectations..just proposing a few "devil's advocate" ideas.

Yes, I believe it's all conjecture at this point, but Gator has their reasons for not accepting delivery, whatever they may be..

 

[KAR120C]

Update - I just spoke with Tony on the phone. Gator pushed back taking possession of the Emiras. Per the explanation I received from Tony - this was due to a variety of factors. He did not go into much detail other than mentioning that Gator has a lot going on/has been very busy. He confirmed that the cars are being stored indoors at Lotus HQ in Detroit. He expects the Emiras to start trickling into Gator next month (January). He is under the impression that CARB cert will still happen in January as he hasn't heard otherwise. He also mentioned that he thought the CARB office/personnel was closed/off this week.

As to why Gator is not taking possession of the Emiras, I am not sure. I understand when most dealers take delivery of a car or multiple cars, they have to finance that inventory until it is sold, which is referred to as floor planning. This functions like a line of credit that needs to be paid off by the car dealers. Maybe once these Emiras hit the dealers, the dealer is on the hook for paying for the cars until they are sold..if that is the case, I could see why a dealer would want to delay taking possession as they cannot sell the cars right now so would not want to tie up capital or credit lines while CARB approval is still in process.

Floorplan rates are not cheap and to hold inventory that can't be sold for a couple of months is a waste of money since the dealer still has to pay the floorplan company each month. Flooring 20 Emiras would easily run $15k/month in interest. Plus you have to store them somewhere. They aren't going to leave them outside so it needs to be climatized storage, so add a few grand more each month.

I'd do exactly what they are doing and hold off possession as long as possible, especially since the next 2 months are usually slow for pre-owned sales.

 

[DerTheDer]

Floorplan rates are not cheap and to hold inventory that can't be sold for a couple of months is a waste of money since the dealer still has to pay the floorplan company each month. Flooring 20 Emiras would easily run $15k/month in interest. Plus you have to store them somewhere. They aren't going to leave them outside so it needs to be climatized storage, so add a few grand more each month.

I'd do exactly what they are doing and hold off possession as long as possible, especially since the next 2 months are usually slow for pre-owned sales.

Yeah, I know nothing about floor plans or how dealerships run, so thats interesting. Maybe Gator realizes that the carb process will take longer, or rolling the dice that way.

 

[GetawayDriving]

Interesting that my PPF letter was phrased like “since we’re going to have the car for a while anyway, here are some protection options we can do”. Seems like maybe this decision to store them at Lotus happened after that communication. Fine with me, I’d rather mine be indoors.

 

[GRP]

Regardless of the reason they need to communicate with all of us. It takes ten minutes to send a blanket email out explaining what’s going on.

 

[s2kmunpo]

Interesting. Thanks for the feedback. Glad someone was able to get ahold of them and get a little more info. While I am sure there may be valid financial reasons to not take possession of the cars, it's just strange other dealers are not doing the same thing, outside of Naples which maybe doesn't care as they do such high volume.

 

[DerTheDer]

So storage, much wow. Wonder where their storage facility is?

 

[MIGZ]

I am surprised more dealers have not rejected cars- given that once they accept the cars it’s inventory- there is a carrying cost to inventory. Depending on state some may be even liable for inventory tax on the car.

What make this worse is if you don’t have storage they just go outside like any other cars until is sold and you have people coming to see and screw with cars. Adding risk to damage to a car that has already been spoken for and a client who after waiting 2.5 years will be very picky at pick up.

I would not take possession of inventory I could not sell more so of this car that has proven to be quite temperamental with electrical items.

 

[GRP]

So storage, much wow. Wonder where their storage facility is?

View attachment 35079

They do have room to store cars there, I remember all of the CNC Motors cars went there after they got caught doing their funny business. I remember seeing some pictures of a bunch of Evoras lined up inside.

 

[DerTheDer]

They do have room to store cars there, I remember all of the CNC Motors cars went there after they got caught doing their funny business. I remember seeing some pictures of a bunch of Evoras lined up inside.

Oh wow! Must be a big area inside. I remember the whole CNC debacle....what a mess!

 

[FEGuy]

Floorplan rates are not cheap and to hold inventory that can't be sold for a couple of months is a waste of money since the dealer still has to pay the floorplan company each month. Flooring 20 Emiras would easily run $15k/month in interest. Plus you have to store them somewhere. They aren't going to leave them outside so it needs to be climatized storage, so add a few grand more each month.

I'd do exactly what they are doing and hold off possession as long as possible, especially since the next 2 months are usually slow for pre-owned sales.

That’s not really how it works. Industry standard is that the manufacturer provides 60 days of free floor plan financing. That’s why you always get the best deal on a car on the lot for a few months , because the dealer is actually paying to keep it there. Dealers never discount aggressively on cars that just arrived because they know they can have them sit for free for two months.

I am not sure exactly what is going on at Gator but my guess would be that they have many cancelations are don’t want to start the clock on the free floor plan financing because between carb and cancelations they expect to have a lot of those cars on the lot for greater than 60 days.

My rationale is simple. I’ve been offered on the ground cars at sticker by two different dealers this week. One offered to enter a custom build in for me out of his January allocations for a May build if I wanted to custom order.

Both instances were dealers I know who reached out to me independently. Both told me the exact same story; most of these orders were placed two years ago so the customers are long gone.

I haven’t really decided if I’m going to take one yet. I do like the car. It’s troubling from a depreciation perspective though that they’re this easy to get this soon.

 

[KAR120C]

That’s not really how it works. Industry standard is that the manufacturer provides 60 days of free floor plan financing. That’s why you always get the best deal on a car on the lot for a few months , because the dealer is actually paying to keep it there. Dealers never discount aggressively on cars that just arrived because they know they can have them sit for free for two months.

Unless things changed in 2023 and Lotus is now offering floor planning, Lotus has not been like the industry standard and the dealer had to pay Lotus USA upon delivery of the vehicle, and the MCO would not be sent to the Lotus dealer until money was received by Lotus USA. If vehicles were floored by the dealer through an independent company, then there was no 60 day freebie. The clock started when the cash was sent by the Floorplan company.

I talked to Tony yesterday and he is swamped getting the latest orders confirmed with customers and locked in with Lotus, so I'm pretty sure they don't have problems with cancellations.

I wouldn't overthink Gator holding off getting the cars. It's a small dealership without enough room to store a bunch of cars and they will not leave any cars outside. Again, why pay flooring AND storage when the cars aren't going anywhere for another month. They'll pull a few cars that need pre-sale work earlier in January so they are ready to go, then the rest later.