Automotive Blog

To solve the age old problem of helping an automotive dealer sell more cars is more complex than you think. It is a completely different perspective depends on which way you are looking at the problem. And some times the solutions presents more problems when it promise to solve. From outside looking in, a development company may think certain things are important to be included in their software, but coming from the inside looki (continue reading…)

If you’re using your dealer websites as a marketing tool, there are certain things that it must have in order for it to serve its purpose. Some of the things that are frequently recommended are contact forms, inventory listings, and staff introduction pages. With the new age of internet marketing, it is also very important that your dealer website have an automotive live chat function. We live in a time where the new form of ‘wri (continue reading…)

Tim Duke of Duke Automotive

Our dealership Duke Automotive is owned by Tim Duke, a third generation Duke family dealer here in Augusta. Tim is married to his college sweetheart Lisa and they have 2 children- Tyler a senior at (continue reading…)

I get asked this question quite often, but in some case not often enough. Seems some people have a “problem” with a $300 a month new car payment, but they are perfectly comfortable with paying the same if not more on monthly auto repair bills and accept the inconveniences that come with them. I don’t know what “drives” people to a high mileage goal? I hear customers comment “This car has to go another 20,000 miles” or brag about how many miles they are determined to put on their vehicles. “I am going to drive this vehicle 180,000 miles whether it likes it or not”. Now if this is a challenge for you, by all means take it, but I can think of many other challenges less costly. Granted, some cars will last a long time and do so with relatively low maintenance cost, but this is not the norm.

How does one know when to throw in the shop rag and get a new car? Well, I don’t have a crystal ball bearing, but I can provide some helpful guidelines to assist you in your evaluation process or your car or when buying a used car.

First: Perform an evaluation of your vehicle yourself using our used car check out list from our Website. The used car check out is self explaining and easy to use. If you have a concern or a potential problem you might uncover with an item on the list, have your auto mechanic inspect it during the next step. A great e-book about buying a used car and how to inspect the vehicle yourself is Inspect Before you buy! (continue reading…)

When BMW takes the wraps off the new Rolls-Royce in January, the car is sure to be hailed as another triumph of engineering – as one of the biggest and most expensive cars on the road should be.

But under the four immaculate coats of paint, the car is also the latest success for the aluminium industry. The monster body of the Roller is all aluminium, marking the latest shift by luxury carmakers away from steel.

Audi, part of Volkswagen, was the earliest carmaker to adopt aluminium on a large scale, with its A8 being the latest model to use a body made from the lightweight material. Jaguar’s top-of-the-range XJ, which goes on sale next year, also has an aluminium shell.

Mike Beasley, managing, director of Jaguar, says the body shell is 40 per cent lighter and 60 per cent stiffer than steel – but it also costs more. “It is more expensive, certainly. But if you were going to get weight benefits of the amount we have achieved, the amounts you would have to spend in other areas of the car would have been even more expensive.”

However, aluminium producers are backing away from their hopes of the past few years that aluminium would rapidly replace steel in the body of mass-market cars. The extra cost of the lighter metal means steel remains the standard for cheap cars. (continue reading…)

Automotive glass ceased long ago to be just a window. The opportunity to produce complex shapes and curves while maximizing visibility is there to be exploited by designers. Indeed, over the last three years, the design complexity of windshields and backlights has increased to a new level in terms of cross curvature and compound radii.

At Pilkington we are starting to identify physical limitations with these designs, particularly with windshields, in terms of meeting EC regulatory and customer optical standards. For example, even if it is feasible to manufacture the glass, there can be natural optical effects arising from the glass shape in the motorist’s view through the windshield causing them to see secondary images (figure 1). The EC legislation states that the distance between the two images should be no more than 15 minutes of arc in the primary vision area (see figure 2) but customer standards can be more restrictive.

The trends towards increased cross curvature of windshields can be seen by the fact that 10 years ago the average cross curvature of a windshield was 10-15mm, five years ago it was 15-20mm but now it can be anywhere from 20-50mm. Any designs that exceed 30mm need to be considered very carefully for secondary images. (continue reading…)

There are different ways of going about this, and as such millions of vehicles are sold every year by the different ways. These include car auctions, direct and other methods detailed below.

Car Manufacturers
The most obvious and main-stream way of purchasing vehicles would be through the manufacturers themselves. Such a place will conist only of vehicles of the same company, and will generally have a much larger price tag than the same product brought from a different source, although the buyer will be safe in the knowledge that it is completely authentic, brand new, and 100% legal. A similar frame of mind will exist when purchasing from a licensed retailer, which also offers more variety and cheaper prices. (continue reading…)