GM Looking to Combine Dealerships
At the convention of the National Automobile Dealers Association next month in San Francisco, General Motors intends to go public with its plans to create GM superstores – putting all of its brands under the same dealership roof.
Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice president of vehicle sales, service, and marketing, told Automotive News that the effort is to reduce the number of dealerships in certain regions. In high-cost cities, the land is often worth more than the dealership, so the new mammoth dealerships – called “GM Collections
Comments
chuck goolsbee
Would the lack of an onsite service department be a deal breaker for you?
The very existence of a "negotiate a price with a sleazebag" sales concept is the deal breaker for me.
Honestly the manufacturers would be better served by having online ordering combined with Delivery & Service Centers. They could have build-to-order and stock delivery. If Dell & Apple can do it, why not GM?
It would completely remove what has to be the most frustrating and unpleasant experience the consumer faces in the car buying process, namely buying the car.
--chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
Russ Bellinis
If the only reason for doing that is to solve the expensive land use problem, then it will not solve the problem unless those super dealerships are built below a high rise parking garage larege enough to house the inventory of 5 dealerships in one location. At the Cerritos Auto Square near where I live, there are something like 20 dealships in a 3 block square area. there is not enough room within that area to park the inventory for all of those dealers. Fortunately there is a huge set of power lines running along the San Gabriel iver behind the auto square. That property can not be used for any sort of public use, so the dealerships lease the property under the towers for extra inventory storage. The dealerships would also have to have a huge footprint in order to fit the entire line of all 5 divisions in one showroom. The other problem is that GM is trying to remake the Cadillac brand to compete with Lexus, Infinity, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, etc. People buying a car, from a line where the price starts north of $40k, expect the cars to be sold in a salon atmosphere. Here in So Cal the luxury marques offer amenities comparable to 4 star hotels. Are the Cadillac buyers going to want to rub elbows with the used car buyer at the Chevy dealer while sipping their complementary lattes, or will they just put Cadillac in the same class as Chevy and go directly to a real luxury dealership?
JHinton
I see this as step one. First GM will combine dealerships so that all of it's products are sold together at a GM dealership instead of 8 seperate dealerships. Then, once this is done, GM can kill off the loss-leader brands of Pontiac, Saab, and Buick.
The biggest thing keeping GM from killing these brands is compensation that they would have to pay the dealerships that lose their product. GM paid $1 Billion to kill Oldsmobile for just this reason.
I do think having parts and service off site is stupid. I know of serveral people that have bought a new car while waiting for their old car to have work done.
GeoSB8K
GM is out of touch with reality. Toyota gets it, taking their premium vehicles and putting them under their very successful Lexus brand, Scion for the young folks, etc. GM is in effect doing the opposite with their superstore. Let's put all our cars together so everyone gets crappy sales service, not just the poor bastards that buy a cobalt. At least Hummer and Cadillac had some ground to stand on, having their own dealerships and service departments. They were at least somewhat separate from the mothership.
The worst part is the Vette (which is a great car) will soon be an AARP exclusive. Younger folks that could afford it might actually buy one if GM had a premium dealer network where the gum chewing, shirt half untucked salesman was no where to be found. A service department where a customer in a $70K Z06 wasn't parked next to a $14K pickup. Call me a snob, but look how well this approach as done for Toyota. Even Honda who did this with Acura here in America has had so much success that they are going to take this approach back home to Japan. Right now GM does not care because they sell every vette they can make mostly to a customer base who started buying their jeans at Sears and still do, so quality service is somewhat lost on them. However, in the not too distant future GM is going to need to take a hard look at what every other successful large manufacture in the industry (cept for Ford, no surprise there) has done with their product offerings in order to have a chance at being competitive.
Chris
It is fine if GM starts to combine dealerships (if the franchises agree). The thing that they need to do is give a very high level of customer service. Here in Ottawa there are two Chevrolet-Cadillac dealers. Their level of service is very high no matter the vehicle you purchase. That way Cadillac customers get what they expect and Chevrolet customers are taken care of beyond what other dealerships would do.
Winding Road » Archive » Arizona Consolidated Brands Dealers
[...] told you in the past weeks about General Motors intention of merging brands together under one dealership roof. GM denied any announcement to act on the dealership plan. Well, GM CEO Rick Wagoner showed up at a [...]
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