[Atlas] Car manufacturers : The new pact between rivals

With or without an all-makes banner, independent or under franchise, these repair shops, be they large or small, will continue to be trained and informed, via their network heads and/or via stockists, by equipment manufacturers who concentrate all the major technological innovations that irrigate car production. The automakers are aware of this. They are set to lose an ever-increasing share of the aftersales market as a result of the rising electrification of their new vehicles. And this will be to the advantage of the independents who can handle the latest technologies while continuing to reign over an ageing internal combustion engine fleet.

Dealerships required to reinvent themselves…

The top dogs have realised as much: they can no longer afford to maintain their exclusive networks as they currently exist. Margins are tumbling, digitalisation is emptying the showrooms – white elephants that have fallen out of fashion owing to the practical transition from “ownership” to “usership”. The car is being downgraded from a status symbol to a mundane mobility tool. Dealers have sensed all this... They are diversifying, and are even hybridising more and more often with multi-brand banners. Car manufacturers are thus preparing to cross a historic line: they are going to begin endorsing independentrepairers, if not to approve of them, at least to label them, to supplement what will remain of their dealer and agent networks. The signs of this change of paradigm have long been in evidence. They can be seen in the aborted attempts to buy up large independent parts distributors; they can be seen in the takeovers of networks of parts hubs or independent distributors; they can be seen in the many discreet meetings between manufacturers and large franchise brands. The recent Stellantis/Feu Vert alliance is clearly but an opening gambit. The weeks ahead – at the most, the months ahead – will see all manufacturers following suit.

… which involves control over data

Perspicaciously, the automakers are even claiming that in the short term they will be able to make more money from the data emitted and demanded by their vehicles than from their sale. Let’s not be naive. If they are opening the collaborative floodgates, it is because they are confident that by doing so they will strengthen their control of the market and their contact with “their” motorist clients, both private individuals and fleets, through the upstream control of the tools and data generated by the digital revolution. “If you can’t defeat your enemy, embrace him” is a Tibetan proverb that manufacturers have adopted as their own. Manufacturers and independents will indeed come together to embrace a single market. They may no longer be direct enemies, but, albeit imperceptibly, they will still remain rivals. l

Jean-Marc Pierret

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