All posts by Admin

Thanksgiving Travel Tips

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Posted in Dealer Information, Holidays Sale Events, Tips

With Thanksgiving next week, a number of people are making their travel plans to visit family.  Spurred by cheap gas prices, millions of Americans plan to travel away from home by driving.

Traveling by car remains the preferred mode of travel for Thanksgiving.  Even a slight increase in people on roads might wreak havoc on families’ holiday plans — even Google Maps is trying to help travelers reach their destinations.  The organization released travel tips Tuesday using data from Thanksgiving 2014.

So what are travelers to do this busy time of year?  For starters, keep track of traffic trends.  Google Maps can report to you which day of the week is the worst traffic day, and you can plan your travels on the other days or at times when traffic will be the least crowded.

Here are a few more tips for families planning to travel for Thanksgiving.

– Don’t overpack.  Most travelers know not to haul too many belongings with them — but that doesn’t mean they won’t.  The more weight you put in the truck of your car, the harder your car has to work to get you where you are going.

– Utilize apps.  You never know what you might encounter on the road.  Apps aid in booking hotels, checking finances and keeping track of scheduled events.

– Be an early bird.  Not all people have the option of kicking off their Thanksgiving break early, but those who can avoid issues.  Not only should you think about getting on the road early in the morning, but if you can consider traveling a few days early.

– Consider alternative routes.  There aren’t really any undiscovered shortcuts during the holidays – at least none that we know of.  But those routes of the “alternative” sort might be the next best thing.  Here’s where those Apps could come in handy.  Use an App like Waze to get you moving on a new, less trafficked route.

– Think strategy.  Always have a plan B.  There might be an accident ahead of you and you need to be prepared to possibly be stuck in traffic.  Have a stash of necessities ready in the car with you.

– Keep your wits.  People might forget potential dangers like identity theft during the holiday bustle.  That’s why safeguarding devices before traveling, making sure passwords are unique and avoiding public Wi-Fi should remain top priorities even when arriving at a destination on time seems most important.

– Account for the kids.  Snacks go a long way in keeping kids from getting cranky.  If treats fail to keep youngsters calm, you might need to pull to the side of the road and just take a break.  Be sure to choose a state rest area or safe exit, don’t pull onto the side of an interstate.

– Keep pets hydrated.  Families taking furry friends on trips don’t have to worry about summer heat, but they should pack a cooler, blanket and harness.

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

WET N WILD INVENTORY BLOWOUT SALE!!!

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Posted in Dealer Information, Holidays Sale Events, News, Tips

Hurricane Joaquin may have turned it’s back on the East Coast… but we haven’t.  At Beach Auto Brokers we have all kinds of vehicles ready to weather the storm!

AND WE’RE PRACTICALLY GIVING THEM AWAY!!!

We’re having a Wet N Wild Hurricane Party!  Now thru Wednesday, October 7th, mention this ad and you’ll receive $500 off your vehicle purchase!!

We have all models available – Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Ford, Chevrolet and pretty much every other make and model!  Get to Beach Auto Brokers today and check out our full inventory – we’ll make sure you don’t get wet!

Need to trade in your current vehicle?  NO PROBLEM!

Need help with your financing?  NO PROBLEM!

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

How Much Money Do Bad Roads Cost You Per Year?

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Posted in News, Tips

America is great at many things, but one area where we could stand some improvement is our transportation infrastructure. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, our nation’s crumbling highways and byways cost drivers more than $500 per year – and the situation is likely to get worse.

That shouldn’t come as a shock to some of you. Roughly one-third of U.S. roads have been rated substandard, and in 2013, it was reported that our country’s 607,380 bridges needed at least $3.6 trillion of repairs. In fact, 20,808 of them were judged to be “fracture critical”.

How has this happened? A big reason for the slow, painful collapse of our infrastructure has been the persistent shortage of funds to repair and improve it. Much of that money comes from the federal gas tax, which hasn’t been raised since 1993 and – not surprisingly – can’t cover the costs anymore. Various solutions to the problem have proposed, including increasing the gas tax and adding toll roads, but none of those ideas have gained traction with tax-averse politicians.  Think about how much it pains you to fill up your vehicle with gas as the price is increasing already.

It’s true that state and local funds are available for infrastructure improvements, but many of those sources scaled back spending in the wake of the Great Recession and have kept funding levels low. Between federal, state, and local resources, the Congressional Budget Office says that infrastructure spending has tumbled 19% since 2002.

How do bad roads affect us and our cars? Potholes are perhaps the most obvious examples: they can ruin wheels and tires in a snap. Other bumps can create fractures or cause belts to fray and wobble. We can go out of our way to avoid those trouble spots, but then we’re using additional fuel, which costs money. And of course, all those issues cause our vehicles to depreciate in value.

What’s the solution? According to a recent study from McKinsey&Company, the U.S. should raise infrastructure spending from 2.6% of GDP to 3.6%, a jump of at least $150 billion per year. While that figure seems high, the return on the investment would be some $270 billion to $320 billion in annual economic growth.

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

Beach Auto Brokers Once Again Supports The Local Community By Sponsoring They Will Surf Again Event

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Posted in Dealer Information, News

Beach Auto Brokers shows their support in the local community by sponsoring Life Rolls On, a subsidiary of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, on Saturday, August 8 at the Virginia Beach oceanfront for They Will Surf Again.

They Will Surf Again (TWSA) is an award-winning series of bi-coastal events that empower paraplegics and quadriplegics to experience the freedom of mobility by riding a wave with the assistance of adaptive equipment and the support of hard working volunteers. They Will Surf Again has the unique ability to engage and bridge the able-bodied and disabled communities, as they collaborate to push the bounds of possibility for those with SCI.

When the opportunity came up for Beach Auto Brokers to sponsor this event, Brian Jones, a local surfer himself and Dealer Operator for Beach Auto Brokers, jumped on it.  “As a local business owner and a father myself, it means so much to me to be able to give back to the community and make a difference.  Watching those who you wouldn’t think could get on a surfboard be able to ride the waves is an inspiration to us all, and we are proud to be a part of this event” Jones commented.

Life Rolls On is a non-profit organization that inspires others to see the boundless possibilities beyond paralysis. Established in 2002, LRO’s signature adaptive surfing program, They Will Surf Again, has grown into a catalyst of hope for thousands of individuals throughout the world.

About Beach Auto Brokers: Located in Norfolk, VA, Beach Auto Brokers has fresh Inventory arriving daily with prices starting below most Hampton Roads Competitors, and a wide selection of brands including Chevy, Ford, Dodge, Nissan and Toyota to select from. For more information about Beach Auto Brokers, visit www.beachautobrokers.com or call 1-757-480-6500.

 

Flying Cars Are Actually On The Horizon…

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Posted in Dealer Information, News

If you grew up in the 1960’s or the 1980’s, you most likely watched The Jetson’s and probably dreamed about being in a car that could actually fly!!!  Well, today we are telling you that dream may actually come true.  The Jetson’s tv cartoon was set in 2062, and believe it or not that is right around the corner (even though when you were a kid it seemed eons away!).

In 2009, a company named Terrafugia (they make flying cars) promised that its first flying model, the Transition, would roam the highways, byways, and airways by mid-2010. Two months later, there was footage of the Transition in flight. And in mid-2010 – right on schedule – the FAA gave the Terrafugia Transition its blessing. WOW!

But five years later, we’re still looking to the skies, hoping to see the Transition on the horizon.

So while it may seem that Terrafugia Transition may be charting a course for the trash heap (because Terrafugia seems completely uninterested in promoting the Transition model that was actually approved by the FAA), we still must acknowledge that the flying car is coming… and we are excited to see it happen!!!

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

Summertime Makes Us All Feel A Little More Patriotic

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Posted in Dealer Information, News

With 3 major American Patriotic holidays all falling around the summer – Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day – summertime makes us all feel a little more patriotic.  So it seems like a great time to note that Americans are increasingly rediscovering the importance of buying local, or buying U.S.-made products. And for some households, that value system extends to their family vehicle.

One of the main reason why people buy American is the economic impact, of course we want to purchase something that helps our own economy. That’s where the so-called Made In America Index, from the Kogod School of Business at the American University, Washington, D.C., comes in.

The index looks at these items:
– Profit margin (depending on where the headquarters are located)
– Labor (assembly point), research and development
– Inventory, capital, and other expenses (location of assembly)
– Engine and transmission origin (location)
– Body, interior, chassis, electrical, and other (location)
– For the latter item, the index uses the current AALA percentage, although here it’s given a strong push up based on the assembly location, R&D activities, and parts and materials sourcing.

“The index reveals that vehicles produced by automakers whose headquarters are located in the U.S. rated higher in overall domestic content because the profit derived from the sale of these vehicles was more likely to return or remain in the U.S,” said the authors of a report explaining the methodology.

We do have to recognize that there is no 100% American model on the market; every vehicle has some foreign-made parts.  In fact, there are all sorts of variation. Some models have been engineered in the U.S. and have some home-grown parts but are assembled overseas, or in Mexico, while other models have final assembly in the U.S. but are made of a surprisingly high percentage of foreign parts.

We thought we’d share with you the top 15 vehicles for Total Domestic Content, with their AALA percentages in parenthesis:

Buick Enclave: 87.5 (75)
Chevrolet Traverse: 87.5 (75)
GMC Acadia: 87.5 (75)
Cadillac CTS Coupe 87.5 (75)
Chevrolet Colorado: 83 (66)
GMC Canyon: 83 (66)
Chevrolet Express 83 (80)
GMC Savana: 83 (80)
Ford Expedition: 82.5 (65)
Ford Explorer: 82.5 (65)
Ford F-150: 82.5 (65)
Ford Taurus: 82.5 (65)
Cadillac ATS: 82.5 (65)
Cadillac CTS Sedan: 82.5 (65)
Chevrolet Equinox: 82.5 (65)

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

Purchasing A Car On the Internet… Seriously?

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Posted in Dealer Information, News

We meet people every that walk into the dealership showroom, but really don’t want to be there… they want a new vehicle, but have an aversion to the process.  Well, many of these people shop online for almost everything else in their lives.  And they would rather shop for their next car that way too.  That being said, its not surprising that a new survey shows that 76% of consumers around the globe would consider buying vehicles online rather than in a showroom.

Here are some of the key findings in the study that was completed:
– Most consumers do research online when looking for a new car, and most of them do so before approaching a dealership.
– Consumers were mostly satisfied with their recent purchase experience.
– Maintenance and customer service are big concerns for shoppers.
– 87% of respondents predicted that the car-buying process would be simplified by moving online in the near future.
– Consumers today seem far more comfortable with online car purchases than they were just three years ago.
– However; Consumers do seem a bit more wary of carrying out the entire process on the web.  They just want to start the process there, but finish it in person.

It’s clear from the study that consumers are relying on the web in greater numbers. Only 4% of respondents said that they didn’t use the web at all when buying their last ride.

One thing that we know as a dealer our customers value is customer service.  The study told us as well that consumers expect more from dealerships in the way of perks and services. That’s not surprising: with cars of all stripes made increasingly well these days, the differentiating factor between auto brands and dealerships is customer service.

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

The study referenced above was conducted by Accenture.  It asked 10,000 people in Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and the U.S. about their use of digital technology before, during, and after buying a car.

Would You Pay For Gas Insurance?

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Posted in Dealer Information, News, Tips

These days, everything can be insured: cars, homes, our health, our pets,various body parts. But would you pay insurance for gas? A Houston-based start-up called LoveMyGasPrice hopes that the answer is “yes”.

The premise is pretty simple:
– You agree to pay LoveMyGasPrice $3.99 per month.
– In doing so, you lock in a price cap on gasoline that’s around 50 cents more than current prices. So, with today’s price for a gallon of unleaded regular hovering around $2.25, you could lock in a cap of $2.75 per gallon, which would be valid for the next 12 months.
– Over the next year, LoveMyGasPrice monitors average fuel costs via the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
– If the average price creeps above your price cap, you’ll receive a refund for the difference. (To keep things simple, the site assumes that participants use a full 20 gallons of gas per month — no more, no less — though there are plans to allow variations in that number down the line.)
– Those refunds could be substantial. If, for example, you locked in a rate of $2.75 and gas suddenly shot up to $3.75, you could get $240 back over the course of 12 months.

There are however, some caveats:
– Price caps are re-evaluated every 12 months. So, the awesomely low rate you lock in today might not be around in a year (when most of us think that prices will have risen considerably).
– There’s no allowance for premium gas buyers. Why? LoveMyGasPrice says that fuel prices move in lockstep with one-another, so a 50-cent rise in regular prices mean an equivalent 50-cent rise in premium. In our experience, however, that’s not always the case.
– There’s no allowance for geographic differences, apart from California. This puts folks in the South at slight advantage, since they usually pay less for gas than most of the country. In other words, people in Louisiana or Georgia might get refunds for money they haven’t properly spent. It also means that subscribers traveling to California and places with other high fuel prices won’t get reimbursed for what they actually pay.
– The site uses PayPal exclusively — no credit cards, checks, or Square. If you have issues with PayPal, this isn’t the product for you.
– LoveMyGasPrice is an online start-up, and it has the customer service to prove it. You can cancel at any time with an email, but if you want to speak to a real person, you’re up a creek.

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.

#beachauto #beachautobrokers #usedcars #usedcarsvirginiabeach #usedcardealerships

In Honor of St Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s Vehicles…

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Posted in Dealer Information, Holidays Sale Events

Considering their love of beer, it’s probably lucky the Irish haven’t played a big role in the evolution of the car.  They do, however, have a few that are well-known, and we thought we’d share a few of those in honor of St Patrick’s Day.

1.    Alfa Romeo Guilietta QV – It’s about as Irish as a pub with no beer, but Italian sportscar maker Alfa Romeo has long used the four-leafed clover as a symbol of extra sportiness on its Quadrofoglio Verde branded family cars.  Alfa Romeo is said to have adopted the cloverleaf symbol after racing driver Ugo Sivocci – who went by the nickname “eternally second” – had a four-leaf clover painted on his bright red racer in 1923. Then he started winning.  The latest cloverleaf model is the Guilietta QV hot hatch, which features a 1.7-litre turbo charged four-cylinder that produces 173kW and can rocket to 100km/h in less than seven seconds – slightly slower than Seamus’ ability to down a pint of Guinness.

2.    Delorean DMC-12 – It’s most famous for its starring role in Steven Spielberg’s Back To The Future trilogy, but before the Delorean DMC-12 (to give it its full name) became one of Hollywood’s most recognisable cars its biggest claim to fame is that it is one of the only three cars ever to be built in Ireland. That, and the dramatic rise and fall of the company behind it. The car was the brainchild of former General Motors executive John Delorean, who after a number of stalled attempts to generate the funds to kickstart his own car company eventually used a 100 million pound grant from the Northern Ireland Development Fund to build the Delorean factory in Belfast. After a series of long delays, production commenced in late 1981 and about 9000 cars were built before the company went bankrupt after Delorean was arrested for drug trafficking. He was later acquitted, but his dream car was washed up.

3.    Shamrock – Like the Delorean, Ireland’s own Shamrock was a bit of a shambles. The company was established by an American duo, James F Conway and William K Curtis, in county Kerry in the late 1950s with the aim to produce a large luxury car to export to the United States.  The car was styled similar to the popular large American models of the time, but was powered by a wheezy 1.5-litre four-cylinder from the Austin A55 which didn’t endow it with the kind of performance US customers demanded. Only 10 cars were built before the company went belly up. All the unused parts were reportedly dumped in a nearby lake when the factory officially closed.


4.    TMC-Costin – Anyone would think that a qualified aerodynamicist and race car designer would come up with something prettier than this. But no, the TMC-Costin is the last car ever to be built in Ireland. It was designed by Frank Costin, who founded the British kit car company Marcos and worked with Lotus’ and Maserati’s racing teams before setting up his own company in Wexford. While the TMC-Costin was quite successful in club-level motor racing in Great Britain, only 39 were made before the company, like Delorean and Shamrock before it, went bankrupt in 1987.

5.    And in the spirit of the holiday… Beer-powered cars – Considering the Irish don’t mind a tipple – or 10 – there’s bound to be plenty of bi-product from the production of its beer. And that waste product could be used to create ethanol to fuel its fleet of cars.

     

Beach Auto Brokers has been in business since 1985, Driven by excellence and proudly serving the Hampton Roads community for over 25 years. The Beach Auto Brokers full inventory of vehicles is available for you to look at, test drive, and ask questions about.  And our knowledgeable staff is ready to help you.  And while you’re here, we’ll take a look at your current vehicle and tell you what its worth – on the retail market and the trade-in value.