Dealers - sourcing cars & best practice

[NatAsp]

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, but a search didn't bring anything up.

I'm curious as to what the most common ways dealers source cars are, and more importantly, which are generally seen as good or bad practice. I.e. "A good dealer will only source via X/Y method, whereas a cowboy would use Z".

Any insight/opinions? Thanks!

[markmullen]

It'll depend on the dealer, we are a specialist Porsche dealer and we mainly buy from private owners. Very rarely from other dealers and never from auction. If we were a main dealer we'd likely rarely buy from a private owner outside of px and would buy a huge amount of used stock from auction, often closed manufacturer auction.

As such there is no one straight answer and it would depend on the dealer.