Auto Sales Revving Up : Consumers: O.C. dealers find hot models in short supply and report an increase in special orders for cars that meet buyers’ specifications.

Dee Ferkula couldn’t believe it. For years she had heard how car dealers are hurting. Almost desperate to make a deal. But it wasn’t a buyer’s market that Ferkula found when she walked into her local Jeep dealer’s showroom seven weeks ago to buy a new Cherokee.

Instead of falling all over himself to put her-- “Right now! Today!” --into one of several dozen models on the lot, the salesman told her she would have to wait to get the one she wanted.

It seems there is a shortage of the popular sports utility vehicles.

And Jeep dealers aren’t the only ones trying to cope with such popularity.

Though Orange County auto dealers have not yet reported long waiting lists, raffles or other signs of a spectacular recovery after four years of recession, most are posting sales increases.

Dealers with especially hot models say they are doing something they have not done much of in years: writing up so-called retail orders for factory production of cars for customers who want a particular color or equipment combinations that just cannot be found in area showrooms.

Most of these spot shortages involve domestic brands, which have gained popularity in the past year. New models from Detroit are making their way into showrooms accompanied by news reports of increasing quality.

“I feel like a Honda dealer,” quipped Huntington Jeep-Eagle co-owner Rick Evans, referring to the popularity and quick sales pace of the big Japanese auto maker’s products in the United States during the 1980s. “We’re not used to this. But I guess if you hang on long enough, your time will come.”

The hottest models include top-of-the-line Ford Explorers, Mustangs with Ford’s super-premium sound system, any Chevrolet Suburban or full-size K-5 Blazer, six-speed Camaro convertibles, and Jeep Cherokees and Grand Cherokees.

“The demand far exceeds the supply” for several of Chevrolet’s full-size trucks and for the redesigned Suburban, said Jeff MacPherson, general manager of MacPherson Chevrolet in Irvine.

“Chevrolet downsized its production because it had an oversupply several years ago,” he said, “and that’s not something they can increase overnight.”

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Many Chevrolet dealers wish they could: Perri Selman, spokeswoman for Selman Chevrolet in Orange, said the dealership delivers 15 to 20 Suburbans a month and that most are sold in advance--ordered by customers who are willing to wait up to 12 weeks to get the color and equipment combination of their choice.

“We got a batch in last month and only six weren’t pre-sold,” she said. “But all six of them were gone within two days. I’ve only got one out on the lot right now.”

One reason for the shortage in California is that Chevrolet--like several other domestic and foreign car makers--supplies dealers on a so-called “turn and earn” basis: cars are allotted based on the dealership’s recent sales performance.

Because California’s economy has suffered for four years, many dealers in the state are losing allotments to dealerships in the Midwest and East, where economic recovery began more than a year ago.

Gary Gray, owner of Orange Coast Jeep-Eagle--where Ferkula bought her car--said the distance from California to Detroit also contributes to shortages: it takes 15 days for Gray’s Costa Mesa dealership to receive a shipment of cars once it “earns” them by selling out its previous shipment. A Jeep dealer in Detroit or Kansas City, in contrast, can turn around a shipment in three or four days.

“It’s like a bubble in a hose,” Gray said. “We get a shipment and have a good supply, then there’s nothing in the hose and we run out before we can get more in the next bubble.”

As a result, Gray--like an increasing number of Southern California dealers--has watched his file of retail orders swell.

“I used to average one or two at a time,” he said. “Now I’ve got about 35.” It takes Chrysler Corp., which owns Jeep, about six weeks to fill such orders.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me how long it would be,” said Ferkula, a senior loan officer with a community bank in Orange.

The car salesman spent two weeks trying to locate and trade with another dealership that had a Jeep that met her specifications, Ferkula said, “but he couldn’t and finally I just gave them a deposit and they ordered it from the factory.”

She expects to receive her black, V-6 Grand Cherokee with factory-tinted windows and an overhead console sometime next week. That’s nine weeks from the day in early March when she first walked on the lot.

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Ford buyers are in better shape because Ford Motor Co. started recovering before its competitors did from Detroit’s doldrums and has cranked up production of its most popular models in recent years.

But the factory still consistently fails to meet Southern California dealers’ needs for certain Explorer and Mustang models, said Theodore Robins Jr., president of Theodore Robins Ford in Costa Mesa.

At Ted Jones Ford in Buena Park, for example, general sales manager Gordon Brittsan said that while Ford is offering a $3,600 discount from the list price for specially equipped two-door Explorer Sport models, it does not make them fast enough to promptly replace what dealers are selling, so they are in short supply.

As a result, Brittsan has told his sales staff not to sell the two-door, five-speed Explorer Sport for anything less than the already-discounted, manufacturer-suggested retail price--the price usually cited in advertising campaigns.

Jeff Nabel, sales manager at Campbell Ford in Garden Grove, said he usually has about two dozen special orders in the pipeline these days. In 1990, salesmen there discouraged customers from ordering, claiming that they had everything Ford made, in just about every conceivable configuration, in stock.

At General Motors’ resurgent Buick division, dealers are reporting spot shortages of several models. Buick shut down several plants for four months last year to provide extra production space for Chevrolet’s redesigned Lumina. Now Buick dealers have a hard time finding Park Avenues and Regals, said Don Partch, manager of Nabers Cadillac-Buick in Costa Mesa.

And Irvine-based Mazda Motors of America thought that its dealers would sell only 800 of the company’s new Japanese-built Millenia luxury car in March, the first month it was on sale. Instead, Mazda dealers moved 1,900 of the sedans--priced from $25,000 to $35,000--in March and 800 more in April.

As a result, the so-called day supply is down by 33%: Typically, manufacturers like to have at least a 90-day supply of a particular model on hand throughout the nation. But if Mazda quit making Millenias today, dealers would run out in less than 60 days, a company spokesman said.

Evans at Huntington Jeep-Eagle said he likes to keep a 100-day supply of Jeeps on hand--that’s about 300 of them. But in the past few months, he said, his stock has dwindled to a 24-day supply. “We had 83 on the lot Tuesday,” he said.

One reason for the Jeep shortage is that the company, decided last year to allow Chrysler-Plymouth dealers to add Jeeps to their lots as a second product line.

“That added more than 500 dealers,” Evans said. “Even if each of them only took 10 cars a month, that’s a lot less Jeeps for the rest of us.”

He said he cannot keep enough cars in stock to have something for everyone. So he has ordered special bulletin boards that will be installed in his showroom later this week. The sales manager will list all the unsold cars that are on order, detailing color and equipment combinations and estimated arrival dates. Customers who cannot find a car on the lot can use the board to pick out the car they want and reserve it, he said.

Unlike the early 1990s, when Southern California showrooms were overflowing with unsold cars, dealers who run out of one of today’s hot models cannot even help customers by trading with a fellow dealer who has one.

“If somebody wants a Suburban and we don’t have one, chances are nobody else will either,” Selman said.