Dealers

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, has backed away from a plan to buy and run as many as 770 dealerships throughout the United States, after the company's dealers mobilized against the plan.GM and Ford Motor Co. have tried to take greater control of their dealer networks. All automakers want to streamline vehicle distribution and selling, which analysts say account for as much as 27 percent of a new vehicle's price.Dealers fought GM's initiative, viewing manufacturer-owned dealerships as a threat to their survival.

Shootings this week have left three people dead in or near North Baltimore's Pen Lucy neighborhood, raising fears about a resurgence of drug violence in an area singled out by police for extra enforcement.Community leaders and officers had hoped that the arrests of 14 suspected members of the Old York and Cator Avenue gang in December would help quell brisk cocaine sales in the Old York Road corridor.Police said yesterday that those suspects remain in jail awaiting trial on drug and shooting charges, but officers are concerned about upstart dealers possibly trying to fill the void.

New-vehicle sales, a barometer of Maryland's economic health, continued to cruise for the year as sales rose 16.4 percent last month, according to figures released yesterday by the state Motor Vehicle Administration.February marked the fourth consecutive month in which sales were higher than in the corresponding period of the previous year."Last month was a good time to buy a car," said Jerome H. Fader, chief executive of Atlantic Automotive Group of Owings Mills, which operates 30 new-car dealerships in the state.

HAVE YOU been leasing new cars instead of buying them, because leases are so cheap, cheap, cheap? So is nearly one-third of everyone else on wheels.Leasing holds a 32 percent share of the personal new-cars market today, up from just 10 percent in 1990. Who can resist an ad that screams, "$199 a month"?But the super-low-lease days are done, says Art Spinella, vice president of CNW Marketing/Research in Bandon, Ore., which tracks car market data. The effective price of leasing a car is on the rise.

Maryland new-car dealers launched the year on a positive note as sales rose 3.8 percent in January, according to figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration."

Republic Industries Inc., the world's largest retailer of cars and trucks, has acquired Fox Automotive Inc., one of Maryland's largest auto dealerships, in a cash transaction estimated at $95 million."

New-car sales in Maryland declined 3 percent last year, but dealers still had reasons to celebrate."It was a good year," said Jacob J. Cohen, managing director for the Automotive Group of American Express Tax and Business Services Inc.'s Towson office.Figures released by the Motor Vehicle Administration yesterday support Cohen's assessment of the year just ended. According to the MVA, dealers sold 331,085 new cars and trucks last year. That compares with a strong 1996, when sales jumped 18 percent and totaled 341,198.

There was a time -- as recently as last week -- when William Hurwitz believed he had made a terrible business decision by ordering so many cars earlier this year. But not anymore.While other new-car dealers are beginning to worry about their supply of cars as a result of the strikes in Flint, Mich., that have halted most of the vehicle production of General Motors Corp., Hurwitz, president of Fox Automotive Inc., insists he's "in good shape.""I thought I had made a big mistake," he said yesterday, "but it turned out to be one of my better decisions."

New car sales continue to sputter in Maryland, falling 9.2 percent last month, according to figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration.The decline marked the eighth consecutive month in which sales were lower than in the corresponding period of the previous year. Sales have been off in 11 of the past 12 months."Very interesting," said Michael Funk, a research economist with the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University, who noted that the figures "are not reflective of the state's economy."

Don't expect the Maryland economy to provide a stock market-type roller-coaster ride.While the Dow Jones industrial average soars and plunges by hundreds of points, the state's economy continues its steady -- though flattening -- climb.With a solid second quarter behind it, the Maryland economy will cool for the rest of the year but not suffer a severe downturn from foreign currency crises in Asia and Russia, economists said."I think we'll probably end up slowing down a little bit just like the national economy," said Patrick Bradley, senior vice president of Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co."

Republic wins bid for Frontier, beats Southwest Republic Airways Holdings says it won the bankruptcy court auction for Frontier Airlines, buying the Denver-based carrier for almost $108.8 million. Southwest Airlines Co. said its $170 million bid was deemed unacceptable because the carrier would not back down from a requirement that its pilots and Frontier's work out their integration before the deal would close. That was a non-issue for Republic, which has said it plans to keep operating Frontier as a stand-alone carrier.

Let's hope Maryland new-car dealers are getting a decent amount of cash-for-clunkers action. They need it. Not only have sales of all cars plunged in this state. The portion of new-car sales has fallen, too. In 2000, four cars out of every 10 sold in the state was new, according to stats from the Motor Vehicle Administration. The ratio has been falling steadily since then, and this year it went through the floor. For the year to date through June, only 27 percent of all sales were new cars.

If the battle between city residents and city drug dealers is a battle of wills, it appears the drug dealers are winning, or at least have city agencies so confused that they can't keep a single street illuminated in a neighborhood that abuts downtown and Mount Vernon. The people who live in Seton Hill got a portable floodlight near Orchard Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to counter a drug market. The dealers who prefer to ply their trade in the dark broke the light by cutting the wires and bending the frame.

A crowd gathered yesterday afternoon on the crumbling steps of a boarded-up rowhouse in East Baltimore. Their attention focused across the street, where construction workers using an 80-foot crane were assembling the first new houses in the Oliver neighborhood in half a century. The people had never seen such a sight - not here, not in this blighted community where one survey puts the vacancy rate at 44 percent and where drugs and crime have chased out most of the middle class. Construction of new townhouses happens along the waterfront, these people said, not in Oliver.

We know about the housing market. Now soothsayers worry weakness will spread from Realtors and mortgages to the broader economy. In that light, Acuras and Impalas may be trying to tell us something. Maryland auto dealers sold 1,965 fewer cars and trucks in August than they did the year before - a 5 percent decline, according to the Motor Vehicle Administration. This year through August car and truck sales have fallen 4.4 percent compared with the same span in 2006. That's hardly the degree of damage we're seeing in housing.

The University of Maryland has been crowing all week about some professor who got a phone call from Sweden. Well, they're missing the really big deal. "I tell you what, there was a time in my life when I played a lot of poker," he said. "It was a long time ago, during the [second World] War. I was living in Santiago, Chile, and I had a job as night watchman in the U.S. embassy." (Night watchman? Shouldn't this guy have been cracking codes?) "I worked Friday nights. I'd sleep Saturday mornings, and as soon as lunch was over, we'd clear the table and get out the cards and play poker until nine the next morning.

DEAR Baltimore drug dealers: I promise this will be the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. Here goes: How about taking the summer off to see what it might be like around here without all the shooting and killing? Serious. How about a cease-fire? A little break could save lives, maybe even your own. I know this is crazy, the idea of drug dealers just shutting down the factory for a few months - too much money to be made, and too many customers to serve. And if you back off, even for a little while, some other guy in a long white T-shirt will take your place, and you'll have to find new work.

He was once the odometer rollback king of Baltimore, prosecutors say, a full-time scam artist who raked in millions with his doctored cars, phony auto titles and network of unscrupulous car dealers. He was also one of the FBI's wanted fugitives. But yesterday, Theodore Schecter of Towson was back in Baltimore's federal courthouse - seven years after he skipped out on his sentencing hearing and began a life on the run. He was back because he had finally been caught - his fugitive life unraveled by a bitter co-defendant and a chance meeting at an out-of-state Wawa convenience store.

BRONX, N.Y. -- Kevin P. Clark drove through his old haunts yesterday, where he spent four years as commander in two of the most violent and crime-infested police precincts in New York City. As he cruised through the Bronx in a Mercury SUV, Baltimore's new police commissioner combed the streets for criminals until he spotted a known drug dealer in a thick puffy jacket and a baseball cap standing alone on the sidewalk. Clark asked the man to come to his side of the street; the dealer refused.

WASHINGTON - DaimlerChrysler AG said yesterday that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations the company's Mercedes-Benz subsidiaries took part in a price-fixing scheme among New York-area dealers. The No. 5 carmaker said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the case is connected to a 1999 proposed class action lawsuit against two Mercedes-Benz units, Mercedes-Benz USA LLC and Mercedes-Benz Manhattan Inc. They were served with grand jury subpoenas in May, the company said.