SC October2011.pdf - Parts & People

Mostly good news for US collision repairers six months after Japan quake
Continued from page C-2
suppliers have any redundancy in
manufacturing,” Gotsch said. “When you
have all of your eggs in one basket and that
basket drops, all your eggs break.”
Parts concerns don’t materialize
The magnitude of the damage from the
disaster for Japan’s automotive industry
was staggering. Toyota alone, for example,
suffered significant damage to three
assembly plants, and 600 of its suppliers
(producing almost 1,300 parts that Toyota
uses) had plants damaged.
So the speed of the rebound and the lack
of real impact on collision parts availability
in the U.S. has taken many by surprise. As
it did last spring, CCC in August analyzed
its data for the average number of days it
took from parts being ordered to being
received, and it saw no significant changes
for the Japanese makes.
“I know that many of the automakers
pretty quickly created taskforces
responsible for tracking every single
component that was used in their vehicle
and finding out which suppliers were
potentially at risk,” Gotsch said. “They
looked at what parts those suppliers
produced, got an understanding how many
of those were parts in inventory, and
determined how many of those needed to
be put in for new (vehicle) production
versus held for repairs to ensure as little
disruption as possible. From everything
I’ve seen and read, none of the automakers
or their dealers experienced any significant
(parts) disruptions, even on a small scale.”
Susanna Gotsch says CCC Information
Services’ analysis has found no significant
change in parts delivery times in the
months following the earthquake and
tsunami in Japan.
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Vehicle mix, values, and
total losses
Parts delays weren’t the only impact
collision shops were expected to see from
the Japan earthquake and tsunami. The mix
of vehicles moving off of dealership lots —
and potentially into collision shops —
definitely changed, at least for this year, but
again, not as significantly as many thought
in the spring.
Gotsch said real or perceived shortages
of new Honda, Toyota, and Nissan vehicles
have resulted in those brands having
smaller sales increases this year than some
of the domestic, European, and Korean
automakers. Toyota’s marketshare this year
is likely to be more similar to what it was
two years ago, she said. But, she said, it’s
hard to know how much of that is based on
the aftermath of the earthquake and
tsunami and how much can be attributed to
other factors — such as the exchange rate
(which makes Japanese vehicles less
affordable) or the fact that Toyota’s largestselling
models hadn’t been “refreshed” for
several years and are now competing with
newer models from other automakers.
Analysts last spring were also expecting
jumps in used car pricing as dealers
scrambled for something to fill their lots
amid real or perceived shortages of new
cars. Used car values indirectly impact
collision repairers because higher values
allow for more to be spent on repairs
before a vehicle is declared a total loss.
Gotsch said used vehicle prices were
historically strong even before the March
11 earthquake and tsunami, and there was
only a small and short-lived uptick in the
spring. Total loss frequency in the second
and third quarter of this year has been
basically unchanged.
So from paint and parts to total losses,
collision repairers in the U.S. have seen far
less of an impact than expected from the
devastation in Japan earlier this year. n
Page C-4 October 2011 Parts & People www.partsandpeople.com