REPORT: Selling cars on eBay starts off slow for GM

General Motors is hoping to get a sales boost by selling its vehicles on eBay, but so far the General's newest tactic to move metal hasn't generated much in the way of sales. The pilot program, which is currently only running at 225 California dealerships, has reportedly generated just 45 sales through nine days. Dealers have so far posted over 16,000 vehicles on the site.

While sales have been slow thus far, interest has been healthy. eBay says there have been 630,000 visits to the GM site and 960,000 searches of listed vehicles. One dealer told Automotive News that while he had only sold one vehicle on eBay, others have seen the vehicles on the auction site and gone to the dealership to purchase in person. That makes sense, considering the fact that not everybody is comfortable spending $20-30K on a new car sight unseen.

GM must at least happy with amount of foot eyeball traffic to its eBay site, though customers may not be finding the deals they were looking for. Auto research site Edmunds crunched some numbers and figured that the average Buy It Now price is actually 2 percent higher on eBay than it is in many parts of California. Automotive News couldn't find evidence indicating that any customers had purchased a vehicle using the Buy It Now option. That may explain why sales have been slow through only nine days, as most auctions last a total of seven days. GM's eBay pilot ends on September 8th.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req'd]