Hey Nick,
I'm disappointed to hear things went sideways like that - that's a tough spot to be in.
You can certainly get a Wordpress setup going that you own and it's pretty simple to do.
Getting the inventory in place is typically the hardest part to do "properly" and can often be the bottleneck in design and efficiency.
That said, I've heard some good things about http://cardealerpress.com/ and a fair number of dealers are using it.
IMHO, your best bet with Wordpress is to use a custom developer and get it done right once. (second best bet is to never use Wordpress 
Wordpress is plagued with ongoing issues and a terrible code base, so finding a good developer can be tricky.
If you find a good one, they can build a custom inventory manager and a Homenet feed parser as well.
What you would need:
- monthly hosting (can be had for $4 a month, I recommend something mid range though)
- Wordpress install (most hosts offer 1 click install now)
- Wordpress theme (find something close to what you want and have it customized or pay for something from scratch)
- Inventory plugin (custom or use CarDealerPress or something similar)
- Great lead forms - I see this sacrificed alot on Wordpress installs
- SEO plugins and content (they help alot, especially when built on Wordpress)
- Focus on offsite SEO - you can't lose offsite SEO as easily as you lose onsite SEO. Make sure all your local presences are up to par
[USER=764]@Ed Brooks[/USER] should chime in - he was going on about some local SEO this weekend and he had a great report I read.
