Toyota could join the ever growing list of car manufacturers that are switching to the ‘agency’ or direct sales model.
“Every part of our business is going to get turned upside down,” the brand’s head of Europe, Matt Harrison, told the Automotive News Europe Congress recently. “The existing distribution margins and models are undoubtedly not sustainable.”
The shift to the agency model has become the leading topic among dealers in recent months as they try to work out the impact on their profitability when car makers move away from the decades-old wholesale business model, under which dealers can choose to sell at full list or stimulate greater demand by discounting that price.
