One interesting thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that some car dealerships offer (and advertise that they offer) new cars from different manufacturers. I’m not talking about Ford/Lincoln/Mercury dealers or Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge dealers, because those are just different brands of one company.
Locally, I’ve seen:
Subaru/VW
Ford/Nissan
I’m guessing, in these cases, the dealership is an authorized distributor of new cars from these companies, rather than a grey market reseller who buys from distributors or other dealerships.
How do these combinations arise? I don’t know of any corporate relationship between Subaru and VW - are these just two manufacturers that say “We don’t care if you multibrand”, or are there economic reasons to have this combination, such as practical distribution networks being shared (i.e. place one order for 10 VW Passat’s, 2 VW Golfs, 4 Subaru Imprezas, and 3 Subaru Outbacks, and get them all in one shipment).
There are a multitude of reasons for this, but to touch on one point of yours, no, distributions networks are not really shared.
I have worked for several multi-franchise dealers, and we tended to deal separately with each of the manufacturers. For example, I processed warranty claims for a Ford/LandRover dealership and had separate computers with the relevant programs to process each brand.
Deliveries of new vehicles also came in separately, as well as parts deliveries.
I don’t know the details, but as far as I can see the dealership for each brand is a separate business, and each are managed separately according to the requirements of the franchising manufacturer. even though they’re both owned by the same corporate entity. Heck, the Suburban Collection in metro Detroit owns a dealership for pretty much every mass-market brand. They may or may not be located close to each other, though.
Dealers are often looking for ways to expand their markets and manufacturers are always looking for appropriate sales points. Sometimes the two forced meet and a deal is struck. Ford generally will not allow a Chevy dealer on the same property in their dealer agreement. After all, they often have an investment and financing in the physical establishment. A Smart Car franchise might be allowed in some places as it is not competitive with the big three/two. Everything is negotiable. A dealer might open up next door with a new property, down the street, or in his regular showroom with so many square feet and dedicated labor. This has been the subject of much litigation, mostly from the big three challenging a dealer’s bringing in competition. Most realize that having more models on display, such as with an auto mall, helps raise the tide of all sales. So now you see more and more combinations.
Some combinations make more sense because the brands are related now or were in the past; Ford/Mazda, GM/Saab/Isuzu, Ford/Land Rover/Jaguar/Volvo, VW/Audi, Jeep/Chrysler/MB, etc.
The VW dealer in my hometown was for a long time the only local Porsche, Audi, and Subaru dealer there also. Their jingle was so firmly imbedded in my brain that for a time, I assumed those four makes were, like Ford-Lincoln-Mercury, part of the same parent company.
My knowledge on this is a few years old, but here’s how it worked historically.
Back when it was just the American manufacturers, they set up marketing units. For example, Dodge was a very popular model, so Dodge had its own dealers. Plymouth and DeSoto sold fewer models, so those two marques allowed dealers to sell both models.
Of course, if you sold Fords, you weren’t allowed to sell Chevrolets, etc. But the agreements didn’t cover brands from outside North America. So a few dealers experimented with selling the almost unknown imports like Volkswagen, Toyota or Volvo.
That let the cat out of the bag. Old dealers started selling imports, and new dealers wouldn’t sign franchise agreements that didn’t let them sell imports.
Then the imports got big enough that they could insist that their cars be sold in separate buildings with separate parts/service departments. At that point John Smith Chevrolet-Toyota might build a separate building next door for his new Audi dealership, but the used cars from each dealership would be on a common lot. And the whole thing morphed into an auto mall.
While not quite the same company, VW, Audi, and Porsche are very closely related and sell cars all built on the same platform. The VW Touareg, Porsche Cayanne, and Audi Q7 are sibling cars, for example.
The Touareg/Cayenne connection is a just special case of platform-sharing between the two separate companies, and isn’t a case of routine rebadging between sister makes. That happens (or used to happen) very often between Audi and VW, because Audi is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG. Unlike Audi, however, Porsche doesn’t fall under the VW umbrella. They’ve had a close relationship with VW from the very beginning, of course, with the original VW being designed by Ferdinand Porsche. VW and Porsche have done other joint efforts over the years, like the 914 and 924.
Of course, the relationship between Porsche and VW is far more twisted and tortured than can be relayed in this post. Porsche spent several years recently increasing its ownership of Volkswagen AG stock, incrementally stepping towards a full takeover. Most recently however, VW has taken a nearly 50% stake in Porsche, and has demonstrated a desire to play the lead role in the slowly-evolving merger of the two companies. It’s a crazy relationship, but that’s what you get when cousins start hooking up.