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GM has filed a request in bankruptcy court to cancel the franchise agreements of 38 dealers who rejected wind-down agreements. In doing so, GM has identified, for the first time, dealers which it plans to cut. Read the full pleading here in PDF form for a complete breakdown (starting on page 32) of the dealers on the chopping block.
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Nice that the document also listed the dealer codes. With a dealer code you can access many GM web sites off limits to the general public.
Only 38??? Seems like there’d be a lot more dealers cut.
A Buick, etc. dealer in a nearby city is in the “wind down” category. I think they’re not publicizing the fact, but not trying to hide it either. Their eventual extinction as an authorized dealer seems to be becoming common knowledge. Of course, it will become obvious to shoppers as the number of new vehicles on their lot declines. Most if not all buyers of those cars will likely know they’re buying from a terminally ill store. So I’m more concerned with whether buyers can know where they’ll have to go for warranty support, etc., in the future. My guess is about 35 miles away. (Or right in town, if the local Chevy dealer survives and will provide warranty service.)
An interesting fact in that PDF file: in 2009, even before the bankruptcy filing, GM dealers were closing at the rate of 80 per month. So over the course of a year, GM could have shrunk its retail outlets by about a thousand just by relying on voluntary attrition.
“Only 38??? Seems like there’d be a lot more dealers cut.”
There were. These are the ones FIGHTING it.
3 of these are from Seymour Texas (close to me). That is a TINY rinky dink multi line store that closed it’s doors over 90 days ago? Wonder why they are on this list.
jwolfe: 3 of these are from Seymour Texas (close to me). That is a TINY rinky dink multi line store that closed it’s doors over 90 days ago? Wonder why they are on this list.
Could it be the desire to share in the proceeds of a lawsuit?
GM’s really doing their share to make people really not want to do business with them. Why doesn’t GM just quit being pansies and cut the dealers they want to cut? The right way. No games. At least Chrysler did that part right.
The one dealer in Connecticut that is being cut, Clyde Chevrolet Buick, was in the paper a few months back when GMAC paid state marshals to repossess some of Clyde’s inventory for allegedly defaulting on its floorplan financing .
Not much of a loss there.
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-clyde-chevrolet-buick-vernon.artapr16,0,2812767.story
Seriously, would you buy a car from a dealer named “Sonny Cannon Auto Plaza?”
Page 12 states:
28. Under the standard form of the Dealership Franchise Agreement, a dealer agrees, among other things, to (a) effectively, ethically and lawfully sell and promote the purchase, lease and use of GM products;
I see that any dealer who is under-performing could be booted as not effectively selling cars. Or New GM could go to any dealership’s reviews as posted on numerous opinion pages and gather plenty of evidence of ethical violations.
GM’s Dealer Network developed over an extended time period in which the Debtors’ market share was growing and was far greater than it is now, and when there was far less, or even no meaningful foreign competition. Over time, the market for new and used motor vehicles fundamentally changed. The automobile market was flooded with imports from foreign Original Equipment Manufactures (“OEMs”) with far lower cost structures and dramatically lower legacy benefit obligations than GM.
Awww, I feel just terrible for GM, they were hardly given a chance to react to this new development in the marketplace. I bet they were surprised that those pesky foreign manufacturors didn’t just go back home after a few years.
Anyone else notice that the Notice of Hearing requires anyone filing an objection to submit it on a 3.5 inch floppy disk? A what? When was the last time you used a 3.5″ floppy for anything? When did you last own a computer that actually had a floppy drive? Then again, why should I be surprised? After all this is GM, the company that is still bringing you Grandpa’s 3.8 liter V6, the company that never has figured out how to build a hybrid, . . . .
This may be a list of deceased dealers, that GM needed to file as legal terminations just to quash any conversation of these dealers being in the will. So they Joe Jacksoned their asses
or just let PTFOA handle it and do their best Ike Turner impersonation on em
MadHungarian: “Anyone else notice that the Notice of Hearing requires anyone filing an objection to submit it on a 3.5 inch floppy disk? A what? When was the last time you used a 3.5″ floppy for anything? … Then again, why should I be surprised? After all this is GM, the company that is still bringing you Grandpa’s 3.8 liter V6…”
That’s the Court’s rule, not GM’s. Courts, perhaps even more than other government institutions, are slow to change. And give the Court credit: they used to require the lawyers to use a computer running DOS and WordPerfect 5.1, and have a Hayes-compatible modem. Thankfully, they also require hard copy as well. Paper documents will still be readable centuries from now.