ATLANTA--Ted Cunningham, vice chairman/director of sales and marketing for Bankers Integration Group, forecasted that U.S. vehicle sales would hit 17.1 million in 2004 and 17.3 million in 2005.

Cunningham, also former executive vice president of global sales and marketing for DaimlerChrysler, keynoted the Automobile Finance Conference and Trade Show in Atlanta this week. He also said that dealers are feeling the pressure of shrinking margins by automakers and gross profit reductions due to competition.

"Dealers are seeing less revenue in the service department as overall vehicle quality continues to improve," said Cunningham. "Facility investments are at an all-time high as dealers expand to facilitate new lines and franchises. And, customer satisfaction in every department is requiring an investment in people, training and equipment."

"Add to that, the cost of federal regulatory compliance that will reduce finance and insurance gross and add administrative cost to the most profitable department they have today, and you have commodity selling except for the newest and hottest models," Cunningham added.

Cunningham explained that dealers must comply with rules such as the Patriot Act that requires them to report the sale of a vehicle to known terrorists. He also named the Federal Trade Commission mandate requiring dealers to store loan applications up to 25 months and the FTC mandate for dealers to notify customers when their loans are rejected.

"Since rolling out BIGFNI in 2003 and BIGFNI 2.1 at the recent National Automobile Dealers Show, we have tried to design our software to be the ultimate user-friendly online financing tool for the auto dealer," said Cunningham. "By meeting these three compliance issues, we believe we are the only online system to meet each of these mandates at no cost to the dealer."