I actually see more and more driving Chevy and Saturns.
I listened to the press conference last night. I think they also mentioned 2000+ dealerships closing within the next 2 years.
We have a lot of Chevy dealerships in WNY. I’m wondering which ones will be here after the cut.
I think a 1,000+ dealerships will close in the next 2 years on their own if car sales don’t rebound.
Plus axe Saturn and that is another 400.
I don’t see why GM should buy any dealers out. But that is my own personal opinion.
I see Paddock, Fucillo, and Basil left in buffalo for Chevy. I think the smaller ones will be the ones hurt in this. The pontiac/buick/GMC dealers will prob be forced to sell all 3 lines if they want to stay in business. Caddy dealers have already taken a beating around here.
either way GM does needs to lose a lot of dealers… they have way too many compared to imports who are outselling them… it’s not working.
It is convenient for the customers though. A lot of imports have one dealer per city, and if it sucks balls, you’re SOL. That would be sure to turn people off of a brand if they had to deal with a bunch of asshats every time they needed service.
Wow, this is really shocking. I wouldn’t have thought to do this… oh, wait…
GMC is redundant, i see no point. Just sell all the trucks as chevys.
Buick is the old man car of GM, more so than caddy these days… I dont really see people of my father’s generation buying a Buick when they reach the grandpa age, so axe that.
Keep chevy obviously
Keep caddy as the high end American car
keep Pontiac as the performance div, but cut it back, aka dont re badge a cobalt and sell it for 5 grand more, keep it to such things as the G8, solstice , maybe a new Firebird.
Congrats…you had the same thought that MANY have had for several years now.
I’d be interested in seeing numbers. We have a ton of Chevy dealers in WNY. We have:
Paddock Chevy, Fuccillo Chevy, and David Chevy all within a 15 minute ride.
Then we have Glen Campbell, Heinrich, Steve Baldo, Keller, Basil, and Gillogly all within a 30 minute ride.
Then there is West Herr OP, West Herr Hamburg, Emerling, Steve Baldo, Basil, Illig, Martin Bros, and Catalano within 25 minutes of eachother.
And I almost missed Ki-Po Chevrolet and Hartway Motors within 30 minutes in Niagara County.
Search on Chevrolet.com for dealers within 50 miles of 14226 and it will give you 26 Chevy dealers.
Still waiting to see what Toyota has up their sleeves to avoid a loss come end of March.
Can someone please explain to me how it is a negative for GM to have “extra” dealers.
If someone doesn’t like one dealer they can go to the next.
Only upside I see is increased volume could result in dealers having to make less on each sale and be able to sell on lower margins.
But with the way people buy cars today the margins are already really skinny.
I am not talking about reducing brands, but reducing dealerships.
Hmmm… I wonder who Saab and Hummer are going to go to and at what kind of discount…
I predict:
saab gets owned by some non-carmaker investment company in europe, this company will still work heavily with GM for parts and technology.
hummer will get owned by a Chinese car company who keep building them in the US and work hard to maintain the image while milking what they can from the current models or with very mild refreshes.
It’s a good start but I don’t see why they’re keeping Pontiac around. They have 3 unique models.
The G8, which they just stole from Holden
The Solstice, which is only unique because you killed Saturn.
The Vibe, a joint venture with Toyota (see Matrix).
So kill off the brand, drop the G3, G5, G6 and Torrent which are just rebadge jobs of other GM vehicles and roll the G8 and Solstice into the Chevy brand. It makes even more sense if you kill the G8 because of EPA mileage mandates which will probably happen. Kill the Vibe unless it’s actually selling. I don’t see many on the road but maybe it’s because I mentally block ugly cars.
As others have said, kill Buick and GMC. It leaves you with Chevrolet for mass market and Cadillac for upscale. It’s a pretty successful formula when you look at Toyota/Lexus and Nissan/Infinity.
On the Ford side Lincoln/Mercury need to have a deathmatch.
pontiac is important… it sells well to the 16-35 segment who don’t want a chevy, but can’t afford something better and want a new car. (no offense, that’s how I see it).
put another way, pontiac is a lot like what scion is to toyota in marketing terms.
As for the above, I could see axing Saturn, because they intentionally limited dealers in the past, so paying them off would be cheap. And the products slated to go to Saturn could go to Pontiac instead (Astra vs. G3, Insignia for G6). Get some hotted-up versions to act as halos (Astra VXR, Insignia with XWD from the 9-3), and poof - reinvigorated performance image. If GM uses boosted engines (turbo 1.4DI, turbo 2.0DI, etc), then you could concievably win CAFE points, too.
Kill Pontiac and bring over Holden.
win/win
Saturn might be sold off:
Can’t read the article, but that came out during the press conference. It’s pure speculation. But I bet Saturn gets bought out by another group and has some dependency on GM for parts.
I’m just amazed this is finally happening. I’m sure a lot of you guys are thinking the same thing as me… IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME.