Automotive News Canada - August 2020 - v2 - 10

OPINION

08.20

When the boss trusts you to get the work done, your address can
be irrelevant. Editor-in-Chief Jeff Melnychuk worked from this
yacht docked near a beach in Panama.

Work from home:
It's a whole new life
JEFF MELNYCHUK | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

WHEN STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS WERE ISSUED ACROSS CANADA
during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think I said out loud,
"Yeah, whatever."
I had already been working from home for more than 20 years, so it
was just more of the same. But then I saw people posting videos of
themselves on social media - unshaven, bloodshot eyes and kids
propped on their knees - about how tough it
to adjust. And then posts from workplace
Working from home istherapists
about how to balance work with
is like winning
personal life, how to communicate with
the lottery, except co-workers remotely and, well, how to stay
motivated and actually be productive on your
instead of money
own.
you get flexibility.
Holy déjà vu. If I could go back in time with
my DeLorean, I would make a Tony Robbinsstyle motivational video specifically for 2020 to address a few key points
about working from home: 1) Can you live with yourself? Because being
mostly alone is your life now. 2) Distraction is an addiction/curse you
have to fight off like bad in-laws. 3) Work days can either be eight hours
of concentrated effort or 20 hours of diluted work that makes you feel as
though you're always working when you're not really (see point number
2) and 4) When you're at home, the rest of the family doesn't really
think you're working and they constantly interrupt you with, "Can you
come here a minute?"
Oh, I know all about it.
I remember my first full day working from home because instead of
40 people buzzing around me in the newsroom of the Times & Transcript
in Moncton, N.B. (a job I left), there was total silence. Just the air wafting from the vents in the dining room where I set up a desk and an
empty filing cabinet. I can talk now like an old pro, but for me back then,
the worst part was feeling disenfranchised. Not part of anything anymore.
And the lack of human contact made me feel lonely. The feature stories
on working from home on Pages 12 and 13 say these conditions are
common.
After a month or so of coping and adjusting to what "work" actually
was, the benefits became apparent. For the most part, I could work from
anywhere with a good Internet connection. A beach. A boat. Panama. A
boat docked near a beach in Panama. And mostly anytime I wanted, as
long as the work got done. So instead of planning my personal life
around work, I began planning work around what I wanted to do in my
personal life. It was revelatory.
Play golf Monday morning? Sure, as long as I got done what needed
to be done that day, even if it meant working in advance Sunday night. If
you can manage time, then you can savour work-from-home's most
important gift: flexibility. It's everything that's possible when, for the most
part, the clock and your address no longer matter. Working from home is
life-changing.
As our stories indicate, businesses want the opinion of staff on who
stays home permanently. Smart, productive employees need to make a
play for this because whether they know it yet, flexibility is like winning
the lottery. Wait, that sounds like the title for my motivational video.
- ANC

EST. 1925

PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
KEITH E. CRAIN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
KC CRAIN, GROUP PUBLISHER
JASON STEIN, PUBLISHER

DAVE VERSICAL, CHIEF OF EDITORIAL OPERATIONS, AUTOMOTIVE NEWS GROUP

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

NEWS DEPARTMENT

JEFF MELNYCHUK, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, 506.854.5024, JMelnychuk@autonews.com
GRACE MACALUSO, MANAGING EDITOR, 226.787.0441, gmacaluso@crain.com

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Don't let a lease bubble
pop and flood market
AUTOMAKERS AND THEIR CAPTIVE FINANCING
million, "the company is on the hook for $1 milarms might want to start scouting for farm fields.
lion," Karwel said. Automakers will have to careVast tracts of land may be needed to park the
fully manage the incoming waves of off-lease
tens of thousands of vehicles slated to come off
vehicles, he said. That could mean temporarily
lease over the next couple of months.
storing vehicles in compounds, empty lots or
Robert Karwel, senior manager of J.D.
fields to regulate the flow of vehicles sent to
Power's automotive practice in Canada, has
auction.
been closely tracking the number of off-lease
"You don't want hundreds of your cars coming into the auction lanes in
vehicle returns since COVID-19
the same week."
prompted automakers to extend
An automaker's best stratecontracts slated to expire at the
MANAGING EDITOR
gy, Karwel said, is "taking the
height of the pandemic, which
cars back and flipping the cusshuttered dealerships and aucGRACE
tion lanes.
tomer into a new vehicle while
MACALUSO
About 223,000 retail leases
holding onto the cars and
were set to expire between April
managing the rate at which
and the end of September,
they go back to auction."
COMMENT
Karwel said. Many of those conEarly signs point to a
tracts were stretched by as much
healthy market. Used wholeas 90 days and have created a "bubble" that
sale prices began to rise in July, according to
could saturate the supCanadian Black Book. Its Value Retention Index,
ply of used vehicles.
which tracks wholesale values for two- to sixIf thousands of
"Nobody wants
year-old vehicles, rose about 3.2 per cent in July,
those units coming
the largest monthly gain since the index began in
lease returns
back
into
the
market
2005. That follows declines in wholesale pricing
head to auction
that can't accept it too
measured in March, April and May and a flat
at the same time, quickly," he said. That reading in June. As well, many vehicles at auction will have accumulated fewer kilometres than
automakers will be would drive down
used-vehicle pricing,
ordinarily would have, thanks to government
caught paying the throwing "all the lease they
shutdowns that kept us at home.
residual-value calcula"So dealers could end up buying more than
depreciation.
tions out the window."
they normally would," Karwel said.
If an automaker had financed $3 million
The industry, he said, is "poised to be OK" as
worth of leased vehicles before the pandemic
long as the lease return bubble doesn't burst.
- ANC
and because of COVID-19 they're worth only $2

Grand Caravan name, Pacifica price
SO THE OLD MINIVAN LIVES
on after all. Sort of.
After years of speculation,
memos to suppliers noting its
eventual demise and email after
email from FCA Canada stating
"no comment" on future product, the automaker finally decided to keep the peoplemover's
life support plugged in.
But this isn't your father's
Grand Caravan. And it's certainly not at your soccer mom's
price point.
That's
If the
because while
Chrysler
Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles
Grand
decided to
Caravan's
recycle the
Grand Caravan base price is
name - mov- the same as
ing it from the
the current
hip, cool
Pacifica's,
Dodge family
to its stodgy
what's the
old Chrysler
point of a
brand - it
scrapped its
two-minivan
most affordable entry-level strategy?
minivan.
And the automaker did so
while playing a numbers game
with its pricing plan.
The 2021 Chrysler Grand
Caravan, which FCA Canada
says is "designed with budget-friendly family customers in
mind," will have a base price of
$39,890, including shipping.
But that's $5,150 more
than the current entry-level
Dodge Grand Caravan Canada
Value Package, which starts at

DIGITAL AND
MOBILE EDITOR
AUTOMOTIVE
NEWS CANADA

GREG
LAYSON

COMMENT
$34,740, shipping included.
While FCA Canada hasn't
announced pricing for the 2021
Chrysler Pacifica, the 2020
base price is also $39,890,
with shipping.
So what's the difference?
Aside from a new platform, the
2021 Chrysler Grand Caravan
gets more equipment than the
2020 Dodge, and it more than
creeps into the Pacifica's price
range, which some Canadians
have complained about being
too high since the Pacifica's
inception.
Standard equipment for the
2021 Chrysler Grand Caravan
will include seven-passenger
seating and the Uconnect 4
system with a seven-inch touch
screen and Apple CarPlay and

FCA believes in the strategy
of raising the base price of
the Grand Caravan by $5,150.
Will buyers? P H O T O : F C A

Android Auto smartphone compatibility. The new minivan will
also be available in SXT trim,
which will start at $41,890,
shipping included.
FCA is limiting the number of
trim levels to two and not offering the Canada Value Package,
which made up 20 per cent of
total retail sales of the Grand
Caravan in 2019. The next-up
SXT accounted for 13 per cent
and the Premium Plus made up
49 per cent.
It seems like a pretty big
gamble to dismiss 20 per cent
sales, although FCA Canada
didn't say how many vehicles
made up that percentage.
Whether people were actually buying the iconic Canada
Value Package - a model that
seemed to be forever priced at
$19,999 - it was aimed at
getting people into showrooms.
It was kind of like a funeral
home showing you a pine box
first and moving up from there.
FCA insists its new Grand
Caravan pricing strategy will
work. Some Canadian dealers
aren't so sure. Neither am I.
"Chrysler will have to come
up with something or they'll lose
that portion of the market,"
Geoff Zobl, new-vehicle sales
manager at Ottawa St-Laurent
Jeep-Ram-Chrysler-Dodge, told
Automotive News Canada in
July.
Dan Loewen, managing
director of Vernon Dodge in
British Columbia said it best:
"I think we'll only realize the
pain once it's gone." - ANC

Automotive News Canada - August 2020 - v2

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