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okunen,

When you say "overlap in the products that they sell", do they have two identical franchises e.g. 2 Toyota stores that are on opposite sides of the same city, or are they wanting to share pre-owned inventory across multiple sites?

Dr. Pete, I think we are on the same page. The reason that I say don't worry too much about duplicate content when it comes to dealer inventory is; for the most part it is out of your control in the automotive industry. Dealer's want to have their inventory on as many sites as they can so it becomes virtually impossible to control.

Don't worry so much about the duplicate content. Those same cars are probable on 5 to 10 other sites anyway; e.g. cars.com, Autotrader, etc. The Search Engines understand the automotive industry dynamic pretty well.

Focus on location, content, and authority. By content, if you can get them to add unique descriptions to each vehicle and if possible unique text on the inventory search pages. Then of course relevant blog posts.

Depending on how much control you have over the inventory SEO you should be able to make the meta title/descriptions unique between the different dealers too.

okunen,

When you say "overlap in the products that they sell", do they have two identical franchises e.g. 2 Toyota stores that are on opposite sides of the same city, or are they wanting to share pre-owned inventory across multiple sites?

Don't worry so much about the duplicate content. Those same cars are probable on 5 to 10 other sites anyway; e.g. cars.com, Autotrader, etc. The Search Engines understand the automotive industry dynamic pretty well.

Focus on location, content, and authority. By content, if you can get them to add unique descriptions to each vehicle and if possible unique text on the inventory search pages. Then of course relevant blog posts.

Depending on how much control you have over the inventory SEO you should be able to make the meta title/descriptions unique between the different dealers too.