GM spokesfolks tell Automotive News [sub] The General is “in the process of re-establishing select points in certain markets around the country as part of our ongoing analysis of our dealer consolidation efforts.” Don’t hurt yourself thinking too hard about that though, because it’s one of those “we must destroy the village to save the village” things. GM is apparently contacting certain former dealers and inviting them to open new dealerships, having already forced them out of business once in bankruptcy court. According to the Committee To Restore Dealer Rights, former dealers in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado and Massachusetts have been contacted to open new dealerships, in urban and rural markets. Some culled dealers located in areas GM has targeted for new dealerships were not invited by GM to submit proposals, and the CTRDR considers this a play by GM to drive a wedge within the ranks of the culled dealers. Negotiations between GM and its aggrieved former dealers resume tomorrow, and news that GM is re-opening dealers less than a year after it shut down 1,300 won’t be good for their political popularity. And yes, that matters. Meanwhile, details on how many dealerships are being opened are still forthcoming from General “Transparency” Motors.
How many times did I say GM’s dealer cull was hasty, wasteful and counterproductive? Now they are trying to put some pieces back on Humpty Dumpty.
They still have way too many, far more than Toyota. But I’ll agree with the hasty part. Of course, local politics has played a vital role in this tragic play.
lets say that, you were dying and in your final moment of death, your last breath, time space dilates, and you are walking through a world, a world where everything you think somehow animates into a neurolinguistical call-response esoteric reality….Having realized after several years that you are now in your final parting moments with this world, your minds eye has done an incredible reversing act and whats this?!….GM is the vital catalytic mytochondria that circulates around in your blood enabling all of your bodily functions to go forth properly supplied with the oxygen and nutritional supplements…….realizing your nightmare is now dawning onto you, you realize that GM must stand for the “game” of life and the “game” is ominously drawing to a close. what shall we do with no new american automobiles? Is my blood being transfused with foreign donors? how will my vital circulation ever resume a self perpetuating forward progress without adequate domestic capital formation, and you would then know to yourself, that it is indeed too late and you are rushing through the train station, or, err, airport, tears streaking from your cheeks to save the general, save the game, and you would be flummoxed to know that it is too late to save the general, the game is hopelessly over and your watching your own life slip away like a bad restructuring plan with little hope of surviving without copious helpings of government debt that alas, will eventually lose traction…..and then……
Sounds like GM is having to pull the rug out from under the CTRDR. It’s a shame that the dealers won’t lay down and die. After all, GM did go through bankruptcy, and they are entitled to reorganize for the better.
OTOH, with GM’s history of ADHD, it’s hard to tell what is really going on.
IMO GM and Chrysler will both be sorry they didn’t cull more dealers.
It seems self evident that a company selling half the cars it once did needs fewer dealers, and that it needs many of its dealers in different places than when the current franchise system was legislatively frozen in time 40 years ago. It seems equally self-evident that GM did a half-assed job of it, just as it does everything else, guaranteeing that it (as well as the competent auto manufacturers and importers) will get even more helpful government oversight.
Not strictly on topic here, but I toured Dealer Row in Tacoma the other day, and while the Dodge dealer did close down, the Chrysler dealer which was also on the list of dealers to be shut down that I saw on TTAC is still up and running.