Towson Ford is gone. So are Baltimore's Apple Lincoln Mercury and Miller Motors Buick.
The family businesses all shut down last year, after a combined 200 years of operation, along with a half-dozen other Maryland car dealerships. This month, Dulaney Lincoln Mercury of Timonium shut its doors after 60 years.
For the first time in at least a decade, Maryland had a net loss of automobile sellers last year, according to the Maryland Automobile Dealers Association. Nationwide, 621 dealerships representing the big three Detroit manufacturers closed last year, according to the Automotive News Dealer Census.
They're victims of multiple factors: the slumping economy, rising fuel prices, the housing slowdown, credit troubles and even the Internet, which has introduced more price competition to lure information-overloaded buyers. Some dealers are finding that they can make more money getting out of the business than staying in, simply because their land is worth more than the business.
Manufacturers aren't making survival easy either; they're encouraging some dealers to fold to consolidate operations. It's a Darwinian thing, with the fittest - read "biggest" - dealerships surviving the lean times. Some dealers choosing to stick it out say you have to love cars to want to keep going.
"There's no reason to believe things will be getting better any time soon," said Peter Kitzmiller, the Maryland association's president.
Domestic dealerships have taken the hardest hits over the past decade, continually losing market share to their import competitors. Last month, GM and Chrysler each had a 19 percent sales drop, while Ford fell 14 percent.
But foreign nameplates did only marginally better: Toyota had 10 percent fewer sales, Nissan was down 4 percent and Honda dipped 3 percent.
"It's just awful; it's the perfect storm," said John Wolkonowicz, a senior auto analyst with the Global Insight research firm in Lexington, Mass. "Just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong."
Part of the domestic manufacturers' problem is that their profitability depends largely on sales of SUVs and full-size pickup trucks, which aren't selling well. The SUVs are doing poorly because of their low gas mileage and gas prices that are expected to reach $4 per gallon by simmer. Truck sales are faltering for some of the same reasons and because the slow housing market means construction workers don't need - or can't afford - them.
