How it is computed
Add product gross (service contracts, protection products, and the rest) and finance reserve for the period. Divide by deals delivered. Then do it again with the two pieces apart: product gross per deal, and reserve per deal.
Why it matters
It is the headline for the business office, and it rolls straight into total gross per unit. A hundred dollars of PVR on a store delivering two hundred units a month is twenty thousand dollars of gross a month that did not require one more car.
It is the number where the finance manager's pay plan, the lender relationship, and the customer experience all meet. It deserves to be read carefully for that reason.
How operators read it
- Split it before you judge it. A high PVR built on product penetration is durable: the customer bought something that lasts. A high PVR built on reserve is fragile: reserve is the first thing a lender trims, a rate cap removes, or a cash buyer never produces.
- Read it with the product index beside it. PVR says how much; product index says how many products per deal produced it. A rising PVR on a flat product index is price, not penetration.
- Know what kind of store you are reading. Subprime-heavy stores, one-price stores, and leasing-heavy stores each produce a PVR shape of their own, and the same number means different things in each.
Questions people ask
What counts in PVR?
Product gross and finance reserve, per deal delivered. Doc fees and front-end gross do not belong in it, and mixing them in is the fastest way to make a business office look better than it is.
Do cash deals count in the denominator?
That is a house decision. Some stores count every delivery because a cash buyer can still buy a service contract; others count financed deals only. Pick one, write it down, and never compare a store that counts cash deals to one that does not.
How A.D.A.M. reads it
A.D.A.M. computes blended PVR as product gross per deal plus reserve per deal and reports the share of it that is reserve, so a fragile number is named as fragile. He reads it beside the numbers it trades against, names what the gap is worth, and leaves the decision where it belongs. What an AI advisor should do, and refuse to do.