Increase in Gas Prices Puts Car Dealerships Under

I've chosen to research three major car dealerships in the area to see how much money they're spending on gas to ship cars to their lots, fill up cars for test drives, etc.  Also, I'd like to see what the decline in sales has been since the recession and gas prices rising again.

For this story, I will interview the general managers of three car dealerships in the Tri-State area about the increase or decrease in car sales over the last year.  I will also interview their service department managers to see if more consumers are bringing their cars in for service rather than trading in. 

I think people would be interested to know how much money is put into bringing a car to their area before they purchase it and to see how many car owners have chosen to fix rather than nix their car.  

I will use the information I gain from the interviews as well as any statistics I can find on gas expenditures from General Motors official Web site.

This story can be broken up into two main parts.  I can report on how much gasoline the dealership itself is using and I can do a piece about how much business their service departments may or may not be losing by consumers keeping their cars for an extended period of time.

If gas prices decrease, car sales may go up again.  At that point, I could do an “after-the-recession” piece about how many dealerships are now safe from losing their businesses.