House of Imports Loses Top Sales Spot to Fletcher Jones

Question: When is No. 1 not No. 1?

Answer: When it’s House of Imports.

It seems the Buena Park car dealer, touted as the nation’s top-grossing Mercedes-Benz franchise in a recent annual ranking of the 500 largest new-car dealerships, has slipped a couple of pegs, boosting arch-rival Fletcher Jones Motorcars of Newport Beach back into the top slot for the German luxury brand.

The switch came after Fletcher Jones’ general manager, Garth Blumenthal, complained that the rival dealer had included wholesale figures in what was supposed to have been a ranking based on retail sales.

It turns out that officials at Mercedes-Benz of North America have confirmed that Blumenthal was right.

Ward’s Dealer Business, the trade journal that compiles and publishes the annual rankings, is running a correction in its September issue, pointing out that House’s narrow ($300,000) lead over Fletcher Jones is obliterated when about $10 million to $12 million is subtracted to account for the value of 843 used cars that were sold wholesale to other dealers.

House of Imports “mistakenly included wholesale units and dollars” in the information it supplied Ward’s, according to the article.

“This means that Fletcher Jones is the No. 1 Mercedes-Benz dealership in our rankings,” Ward’s Senior Editor Tim Keenan said.

Fletcher Jones Motorcars and House of Imports have been sniping at each other for years over bragging rights to the No. 1 title.

Jones in past years has won the designation from Ward’s because it outdid House in revenue from repairs, service, body work and car sales.

But House had claimed that it was the real No. 1 because it sold more new Mercedes-Benz cars than anyone in the country--a claim that was and is true.

Ward’s, however, ranks dealers by dollar volume, not units sold. Because Fletcher Jones customers typically buy more expensive Mercedes models than House customers, Jones this year again beats House in revenue from new cars as well as in overall revenue.

The revision also cost House of Imports four spots on Ward’s overall listing of the top 500, dropping it into 23rd place and pushing Fletcher Jones up one slot into 19th place among all new-car dealers in the country.

Revised numbers give Fletcher Jones the edge with $169.1 million in gross retail revenue from all sources versus House’s total, lowered by $10 million, of $159.4 million.