General Motors said on May 14 that 1,100 of its dealers — one in five — would be dropped by late next year, adding to the economic pain radiating from the beleaguered Detroit automakers to cities and towns across the country.
Including Chrysler’s decision a day earlier to eliminate a quarter of its own, about 1,900 dealerships — many pillars of their communities and heavy advertisers for local media — learned in a matter of 48 hours that they would be forced either to sell fewer brands or close altogether. The GM dealerships will be eliminated when their contracts end late next year.
While GM doesn’t own the dealers, the company says its network is too big, causing dealers to compete with each other and giving shoppers too much leverage to talk down prices and hurt future sales.
Several hundred of the GM dealers knew already they were headed for closure, but most of them learned for the first time. The National Automobile Dealers Association, an industry group, says the GM and Chrysler cuts combined could wipe out 100,000 jobs.
Both GM and Chrysler are scrambling to reorganize and stay alive in a severe recession that has pummeled car and truck sales for U.S. automakers, which had already been losing market share to foreign companies for decades.
Chrysler LLC is already in bankruptcy protection, and industry analysts say General Motors Corp. is making its cuts now in preparation for a bankruptcy filing June 1. The company says it would prefer to restructure out of court.
GM declined to reveal which dealers will be eliminated. Many dealers vowed to fight, first through a 30-day company appeal process, then possibly in court.
GM’s dealers are protected by state franchise laws, and the company concedes it would be easier to cut them if it were operating under federal bankruptcy protection. GM says it’s trying to restructure outside of bankruptcy because of the stigma of Chapter 11.
Chrysler dealers have fewer options because the company has already filed for bankruptcy protection, and federal bankruptcy judges generally trump state law. And Chrysler said on May 13 that its cuts were final.
GM outlined a plan to cut about 40 per cent of its 6,000-dealer network by the end of 2010 in hopes of getting the company back on its feet. Besides the 1,110 dealership cuts, the company will shed about 500 dealerships that market the Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands, which GM plans to phase out or sell.
And when the surviving dealers’ contracts are up in late 2010, GM will cut still more by not offering renewals to about 10 per cent of the dealers who are left. Dealers could stay open selling used cars or other brands, but GM and Chrysler cuts will still leave cities across the U.S. with empty buildings, vacant lots and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost tax revenues.
FedEx letters bearing the bad news began arriving at GM franchises around the country. The letter states that dealers had been judged on sales, customer service scores, location, condition of facilities and other criteria.
While the targeted dealers represent about 20 per cent of GM’s total, they make only 7 per cent of its sales, the company said.
The cuts will allow the surviving dealers to expand the size of their markets, so they have a better chance of staying healthy and attracting private investment.
Toyota, for example, generally has larger and newer showrooms and service departments than GM and Chrysler dealers — making those dealerships more attractive to potential buyers.
Chrysler is aiming to close its nearly 800 dealers by June 9, and those outlets may try deep discounts to clear out their remaining inventory. But in the long run, prices for cars and trucks will probably rise for customers as dealerships disappear.
“No longer will people be able to shop between three or four dealers within 15 minutes of each other for the best cutthroat price,” said Aaron Bragman, an automotive industry analyst with the consulting firm IHS Global Insight.
As GM and Chrysler lost market share to Japanese and other overseas brands, they ended up with too many dealers. So did Ford Motor Co., which has managed to stay healthier than either of its Detroit siblings.
In the 1980s, GM, Chrysler and Ford accounted for more than 75 per cent of U.S. sales, but that dropped to 48 per cent last year. GM alone held nearly 51 per cent of the market in 1962, but only 22 per cent last year.
Chrysler and GM (GM) propose closing 3,000 dealers in an effort to save money by narrowing down their distribution networks. Some of the larger dealers probably employ 100 people. In an economy that is losing nearly 600,000 jobs a month, the new efficiency program from Detroit is going to add to the burden of unemployed Americans very quickly.
In the early years of the automobile, car dealers took animals in trade. As time passed the largest dealerships built elaborate showrooms and spent their own money for events around new model debuts. Running a large dealership is expensive. Buying cars from the manufacturers has not been a winning proposition for many dealers over the last two years. Most have to borrow money to purchase inventory. As sales have dropped due to the recession, many vehicles stay on the lots for months. Being a car dealer went from being extremely profitable in many cases to being a no-win business.
The relationship between The Big Three and its dealers was, for many years, symbiotic. There was some real balance between the products and marketing that came from the manufacturing and the sales and service that came from the dealer.
That bond has been broken in an especially short period since approximately a third of the distributors of cars for Chrysler and GM will lose their franchises. It is the only financially expedient thing to do, but the government is, once again, encouraging an action that will put tens of thousands of taxpayers out of jobs. By placing the large car companies on short leases, the Administration is insisting that they destroy decades-old relationships with suppliers, shareholders, debtholders, and dealerships. It is not entirely clear that the destruction won’t be more expensive than the bailout.
Depending on how an accountant would value the equity that the Treasury will get in Detroit, the federal government will put $40 billion into the U.S. car industry and that number could go higher if the domestic automotive market does not recover. The auto industry is selling fewer than 10 million cars a year after selling over 16 million just four year ago and under those circumstances no expense reduction will make the industry profitable.
Shuttering car parts suppliers, large and small, closing dealers, firing tens of thousands of white collar and blue collar workers costs the American economy, in aggregate, more money than is imaginable and very possibly more than $40 billion over the next two or three years.
The government operates by blunt force. It does not have the agility to do surgical work. That not only leads to mistakes that might not be made if the government had a great deal of time and a great many experts to solve problems. During an economic collapse those assets are too precious.
Pathos is one word that could describe the shuttering of 3,000 American car dealers. Car sales operations have not always had a great reputation with the public but the human costs of shuttering them is no different than closing a hospital or a munitions factory.
Including Chrysler’s decision a day earlier to eliminate a quarter of its own, about 1,900 dealerships — many pillars of their communities and heavy advertisers for local media — learned in a matter of 48 hours that they would be forced either to sell fewer brands or close altogether. The GM dealerships will be eliminated when their contracts end late next year.
While GM doesn’t own the dealers, the company says its network is too big, causing dealers to compete with each other and giving shoppers too much leverage to talk down prices and hurt future sales.
Several hundred of the GM dealers knew already they were headed for closure, but most of them learned for the first time. The National Automobile Dealers Association, an industry group, says the GM and Chrysler cuts combined could wipe out 100,000 jobs.
Both GM and Chrysler are scrambling to reorganize and stay alive in a severe recession that has pummeled car and truck sales for U.S. automakers, which had already been losing market share to foreign companies for decades.
Chrysler LLC is already in bankruptcy protection, and industry analysts say General Motors Corp. is making its cuts now in preparation for a bankruptcy filing June 1. The company says it would prefer to restructure out of court.
GM declined to reveal which dealers will be eliminated. Many dealers vowed to fight, first through a 30-day company appeal process, then possibly in court.
GM’s dealers are protected by state franchise laws, and the company concedes it would be easier to cut them if it were operating under federal bankruptcy protection. GM says it’s trying to restructure outside of bankruptcy because of the stigma of Chapter 11.
Chrysler dealers have fewer options because the company has already filed for bankruptcy protection, and federal bankruptcy judges generally trump state law. And Chrysler said on May 13 that its cuts were final.
GM outlined a plan to cut about 40 per cent of its 6,000-dealer network by the end of 2010 in hopes of getting the company back on its feet. Besides the 1,110 dealership cuts, the company will shed about 500 dealerships that market the Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands, which GM plans to phase out or sell.
And when the surviving dealers’ contracts are up in late 2010, GM will cut still more by not offering renewals to about 10 per cent of the dealers who are left. Dealers could stay open selling used cars or other brands, but GM and Chrysler cuts will still leave cities across the U.S. with empty buildings, vacant lots and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost tax revenues.
FedEx letters bearing the bad news began arriving at GM franchises around the country. The letter states that dealers had been judged on sales, customer service scores, location, condition of facilities and other criteria.
While the targeted dealers represent about 20 per cent of GM’s total, they make only 7 per cent of its sales, the company said.
The cuts will allow the surviving dealers to expand the size of their markets, so they have a better chance of staying healthy and attracting private investment.
Toyota, for example, generally has larger and newer showrooms and service departments than GM and Chrysler dealers — making those dealerships more attractive to potential buyers.
Chrysler is aiming to close its nearly 800 dealers by June 9, and those outlets may try deep discounts to clear out their remaining inventory. But in the long run, prices for cars and trucks will probably rise for customers as dealerships disappear.
“No longer will people be able to shop between three or four dealers within 15 minutes of each other for the best cutthroat price,” said Aaron Bragman, an automotive industry analyst with the consulting firm IHS Global Insight.
As GM and Chrysler lost market share to Japanese and other overseas brands, they ended up with too many dealers. So did Ford Motor Co., which has managed to stay healthier than either of its Detroit siblings.
In the 1980s, GM, Chrysler and Ford accounted for more than 75 per cent of U.S. sales, but that dropped to 48 per cent last year. GM alone held nearly 51 per cent of the market in 1962, but only 22 per cent last year.
Chrysler and GM (GM) propose closing 3,000 dealers in an effort to save money by narrowing down their distribution networks. Some of the larger dealers probably employ 100 people. In an economy that is losing nearly 600,000 jobs a month, the new efficiency program from Detroit is going to add to the burden of unemployed Americans very quickly.
In the early years of the automobile, car dealers took animals in trade. As time passed the largest dealerships built elaborate showrooms and spent their own money for events around new model debuts. Running a large dealership is expensive. Buying cars from the manufacturers has not been a winning proposition for many dealers over the last two years. Most have to borrow money to purchase inventory. As sales have dropped due to the recession, many vehicles stay on the lots for months. Being a car dealer went from being extremely profitable in many cases to being a no-win business.
The relationship between The Big Three and its dealers was, for many years, symbiotic. There was some real balance between the products and marketing that came from the manufacturing and the sales and service that came from the dealer.
That bond has been broken in an especially short period since approximately a third of the distributors of cars for Chrysler and GM will lose their franchises. It is the only financially expedient thing to do, but the government is, once again, encouraging an action that will put tens of thousands of taxpayers out of jobs. By placing the large car companies on short leases, the Administration is insisting that they destroy decades-old relationships with suppliers, shareholders, debtholders, and dealerships. It is not entirely clear that the destruction won’t be more expensive than the bailout.
Depending on how an accountant would value the equity that the Treasury will get in Detroit, the federal government will put $40 billion into the U.S. car industry and that number could go higher if the domestic automotive market does not recover. The auto industry is selling fewer than 10 million cars a year after selling over 16 million just four year ago and under those circumstances no expense reduction will make the industry profitable.
Shuttering car parts suppliers, large and small, closing dealers, firing tens of thousands of white collar and blue collar workers costs the American economy, in aggregate, more money than is imaginable and very possibly more than $40 billion over the next two or three years.
The government operates by blunt force. It does not have the agility to do surgical work. That not only leads to mistakes that might not be made if the government had a great deal of time and a great many experts to solve problems. During an economic collapse those assets are too precious.
Pathos is one word that could describe the shuttering of 3,000 American car dealers. Car sales operations have not always had a great reputation with the public but the human costs of shuttering them is no different than closing a hospital or a munitions factory.
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