An Uphill Road for Regional Auto Mall : Thousand Oaks: The center boasts the broadest selection of vehicles in the U.S. But dealers say the city won’t go the extra mile to support them.

Clustered on 50 acres along the Ventura Freeway, the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall bills itself as “the biggest” auto mall in the country. In one sense it is: With 35 vehicle nameplates from Acura to Ford to Volvo--some sitting bumper-to-bumper in the mall’s 19 showrooms--the complex offers more brands than any other auto center.

But to the nine dealers whose fortunes are tied to this suburban supermarket for cars, the problem is that not that many people seem to know about the 25-year-old auto mall.

“Even in this town, there are people who don’t know there’s a Ford dealer here,” frets Jeff Kemp of Kemp Ford, who has been at the mall since 1975 and hopes the city will allow the mall to put up an electronic signboard along the highway. Adds Jay Gorman, executive vice president of the California Motor Car Dealers Assn. in Los Angeles: “I didn’t even know it’s called a ‘mall.’ ”

The dealers blame the city for a lack of support. Thousand Oaks has limited the size of the mall’s neon signs, for instance, and how long it can hang banners to advertise sales. “A guy could drive right by it and not know that he’d reach us,” said James Ladin, chief executive officer of Ladin Lincoln-Mercury Suzuki at the mall.

For the 12 months ended June 30, the mall generated about $185 million in taxable revenue, about the same as the year before, according to city records. That excludes revenue from service labor, warranty contracts and some fleet sales, which usually are a small part of a dealership’s revenue.

As a result, the Auto Mall contributes 20%, or $1.8 million, of Thousand Oaks’ overall sales tax revenue.

As a whole, the car center clearly is weathering the economic downturn better than the auto malls in Oxnard and Ventura. But analysts and other outsiders say the Thousand Oaks mall has failed to take full advantage of its potential.

Cerritos Auto Square in Orange County does almost twice as much business as the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall, according to tax figures. Even taking into account Cerritos’ much larger population base, analysts point out that it has a dozen fewer franchises than the Thousand Oaks mall.

Even some individual dealerships, such as Galpin Ford in North Hills with annual sales of about $145 million, approach the mall’s overall taxable sales. And just down the street, Thousand Oaks Toyota--the city’s only auto franchise not in the mall--had revenue of $39 million last year, apparently more than any franchise in the mall.

Bert Boeckmann II, president of Galpin Ford, the country’s highest-volume Ford dealership, argues that the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall’s broad-based advertising isn’t likely to affect consumers in the San Fernando Valley. “I haven’t run into them as a competitor” in either service or price, he said.

“Having the most selection is a huge benefit,” said J. Herron, a senior partner at the Agoura Hills-based consulting firm J. D. Power & Associates, which surveyed the country’s 120 auto malls last year, one-third of which are in Southern California. “But if you never tell the consumer that you have this complete selection, you’re just a cluster of independent stores.”

But dealers at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall began joint advertising in May, 1991, when J. D. Power showed them that they offered the broadest selection among all auto malls in North America.

After Power revealed its finding, the once-rival dealers formed the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall Assn. Since then, the association has spent about $75,000 per month to advertise the mall on radio and cable television, from Malibu to Santa Barbara to the San Fernando Valley. (At Cerritos Auto Square, paying for joint advertising has been a precondition to entering the mall since it opened in 1981.) For dealers at the Thousand Oaks center, the joint advertising is apparently helping them surpass last year’s pace. Through October, the dealers as a whole sold 28% more vehicles than last year, according to Robert Charney, president of Sherman Oaks-based Mosiac, which handles the mall’s advertising.

In interviews, dealers at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall generally declined to provide financial results, but all said they are profitable this year. That includes Courtesy Chevrolet, the mall’s first occupant, as well as the mall’s newest and biggest investor, Los Angeles demi-billionaire John E. Anderson, whose nine Silver Star franchises were flowing in red ink in 1991 due to a $22-million investment in new buildings.

Kemp, among several others, said: “We’ve never been in the red.”

Thousand Oaks Auto Mall dealers are acting collectively on pricing as well. In the last year, dealers agreed to offer refunds to customers if the buyer found a lower price within three days. And to increase visibility, the association has persuaded the city to put up Auto Mall exit signs on the Ventura Freeway--where 150,000 vehicles are said to pass by daily. Thousand Oaks has also renamed the street that parallels the freeway Auto Mall Drive.

What’s needed now, the dealers say, is a new electronic sign on the freeway to replace the old 13-foot wooden sign in cracked white letters, which displays the mall’s former name--the Westlake-Thousand Oaks Auto Center. For years, the sign was partly obscured by eucalyptus trees and shoots, which were cut down only this year, and one of the four bulbs that light the sign at night has been out for weeks.

“This auto mall deserves a sign,” said Robert Nesen, owner of Nesen Motor Car Co., the mall’s second-biggest dealership. Nesen, an ambassador to Australia during the Reagan Administration, owns seven franchises, which according to Auto Age magazine had sales of $172 million in 1991 ($95 million of it in fleet sales).

Nesen’s fellow dealers at the mall complain that Thousand Oaks’ signage rules are far too restrictive. Banners, for example, can only be up 10 days before new permits must be obtained. There are also regulations on the use of balloons and the color and size of signs that, dealers say, prevent them from displaying the mall more aggressively.

Whether Thousand Oaks will allow an electronic signboard on the Ventura Freeway--something like the 60-foot sign outside Ventura Auto Center 40 miles to the west--is uncertain. Members of the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall Assn. say the group has already spent $20,000 for legal and consulting fees regarding the sign.

City Manager Grant Brimhall agreed that Thousand Oaks is a tough city when it comes to signage regulations. And he noted that there will be considerable interest in the community about an electronic signboard.

Another problem is that the mall’s many dealerships have found it difficult to agree on what to do. Ladin Lincoln-Mercury, for example, has only 38 employees, and its revenue palls next to Silver Star, which has annual sales of $80 million and employs 171 people, according to Susan Mejia, executive vice president of Silver Star. Total employment at the mall is about 800.

“What’s good advertising for Ford may not be good advertising for Volvo,” said Kemp.

Over the years, the center’s dealers did try to form an association, said Syd Hamilton, owner of Courtesy Chevrolet and the association’s president. But they could never quite come together, he said, because each saw itself as an independent business and the one next door as a competitor. But more recently, that feeling has changed, he said. “My competitor isn’t the Ford dealer. It’s the Chevy dealer in Onxard or Ventura or the Valley.”

Hamilton was 38 when he moved from San Jose to Los Angeles. In 1966, he and his partner, R. Mitchel McClure, were awarded the Chevrolet dealership in Thousand Oaks, which then had a quarter of its current 100,000 residents. That year, Hamilton and McClure persuaded the now-defunct American-Hawaiian Land Co., which was developing 12,000 acres in what is now Westlake Village, to designate 50 acres for a future auto mall. Courtesy Chevrolet opened in September, 1967.

“At that time, this was all open field out here,” Hamilton recalled. A year later, Ford set up shop nearby, then Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac. Within 10 years, all 50 acres were taken up, and the dealers continued to add franchises as they came along.

Hamilton knew the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall was big, but like the others, it wasn’t until J. D. Power brought it to his attention that he knew for sure. “We haven’t been as aggressive, but now we will be,” said Nesen. Kemp added that the association has given the mall greater political clout and may help with issues such as signage.

Not all agree that a bigger sign and greater visibility will do much for the Auto Mall. Andy Robles, general manager of rival Thousand Oaks Toyota, said he was doing well enough and “you can’t even see my place from the freeway.”

But other auto executives acknowledged that the association was beginning to have an impact, however small it may be.

“I didn’t really realize they were the biggest” until hearing about it in a radio ad, said Jerry Brodkey, a salesman at Kolbe Honda in Reseda who lives near the Thousand Oaks mall. “To have that many models and makes, it’s like having a year-round auto show,” he said. “That’s something that will draw people out there.”

Thousand Oaks Auto Mall at a Glance Opened in 1967, the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall is one of the oldest auto centers in the country, and it bills itself as the world’s largest in terms of the number of nameplates, or vehicle brands. But in total sales, the mall isn’t a huge success. Dealers complain that the city isn’t helping them enough, despite the mall’s big contribution to city tax coffers. Dealerships: 9 Vehicle brands: 35 Size: 50 acres Total employees: About 800 Annual revenue: $185 million * Fiscal ’92 sales tax to Thousand Oaks: $1.8 million ** Percent of city’s tax revenue provided by mall: 20% * Based on 1991 sales tax receipts; excludes non-taxable revenue such as repairs, warranty contracts and some fleet sales. ** 12 months ending June 30, 1992 Sources: Mall dealerships, city of Thousand Oaks