REPORT: Stand-alone Buick, GMC dealers to be dualed, only 17k Pontiacs left
From a bird's eye view, bad old bankrupt General Motors' transition into the new, solvent "good GM" looks pretty much okay. From a marketing point of view, Chevrolet matches up well with Ford, Buick is akin to Mercury and Cadillac is the brand Lincoln would love to be. Or maybe Chevy matches up with Toyota, Buick with Lexus and Cadillac... er... point being, in some justifiable, mostly non-abstract way, those three brands make sense. But GMC? Every truck GMC sells (and all they sell is trucks) is already available as a Chevrolet. In fact, counting the Colorado and the Avalanche, Chevy sells more types of trucks than truck-only GMC. Someone then might raise the question, "Why is new GM keeping GMC around?" Ask a Buick dealer.
Automotive News is reporting that by October 2010 there will be no stand-alone Buick or GMC dealerships. They will all be consolidated into Buick-GMC "duals." This decision will affect around 3,000 dealerships that peddle/peddled Buick, GMC and/or Pontiac – they will be consolidated into 2,000 Buick-GMC dealers. Said Susan Docherty, general manager of Buick and GMC, "All our franchise agreements will be renewed then, and we'll only offer one contract: a dual Buick-GMC." When asked how many stand alone stores will be left selling just Buicks or GMCs, Docherty said, "none."
Small side note: if you want to buy a Pontiac, you'd better hurry up. The prices have been slashed, they're selling like hot cakes and Docherty is saying by tomorrow there will only be 16,000 to 17,000 left – and that's it.
[Source: Automotive News - sub. req'd | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Epsilon-Not 1:33PM (8/31/2009)
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to just start selling more trucks under the Buick nameplate... probably not, Buick doesn't have the same image.
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some1 8:37PM (8/31/2009)
what im curious about is... if buick cannot stand on its own, and needs GMC... why is GM keeping it around? maybe they should just have less dealerships for buick... then there would be a greater concentration of people at any given one.
Pino 1:35PM (8/31/2009)
GM either needs to stop making Chevy trucks or GMC should have stayed with Bad GM, it doesnt make sence to make the same truck under two Brands, considering that is what has been hurting GM for the last 20 years, Two many brands making the same car.
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inline6 2:06PM (8/31/2009)
GMC does make sense.
1) They're GM's second-best-selling brand.
2) They go at higher average transaction rates than Chevys do, so they're more profitable per unit.
and 3) they take minimal investment to make that kind of profit.
GM learned the hard way when they canned Oldsmobile that their other brands wouldn't take up the slack in sales. Buick, Pontiac, and Saturn sure didn't. All you get is a lot of pissed off buyers with less confidence in GM, so they traded their depreciates Oldses in on Camrys and Accords instead of LaCrosses and Malibus.
GM doesn't want to lose 350,000+ annual unit sales in the most profitable vehicles: trucks.
SimbaDogg 8:43PM (8/31/2009)
this is such a gah'd damn no brainer, but seriously the suits at GM still missed the point. they axed saturn and pontiac because they weren't profitable. saturn was obviously different, and pontiac...though it used to have a performance mantra, has really lost its way over the decades.
anyways, they decide to keep GMC because they saw that it was still profitable. Its still profitable because its selling the same exact profitable cars that are available under the chevy nameplate. Now...think how much more money you could make as a company if you could sell 1 version of a gm truck/suv and not have to worry about badge engineering or different dealerships. if a 25 year old college student (myself) could see the writings on the wall for months, WTF are they paying those suits for?
Starnerf 1:40PM (8/31/2009)
I think you meant "peddle/peddled". I don't think pedal GMCs would be terribly popular
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Borrego 2:22PM (8/31/2009)
Seriously, Autoblog: hire a copy editor.
Protzenegger 10:13AM (9/01/2009)
I'm available, if need be.
bob 1:41PM (8/31/2009)
GMC should starts making cars and make GMC like somewhat of a performance edition of GM vehicles. Rather than seeing GMC solely making "nicer" trucks and Potinacs making "flashy" cars.
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Doug 1:44PM (8/31/2009)
Time to go get my G8 GXP before they're all gone!
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geo.stewart 1:49PM (8/31/2009)
idk, if a vibe has a 20K buy it now price, idk that a g8 is going to be a bargain.
but here you go
25,500 for a G8 GT.
eric_n_dfw 2:16PM (8/31/2009)
A few quick searches in north Texas show GXP's still asking over $40k. Not much of a "price slash".
Big Mola 2:27PM (8/31/2009)
Stop posting about how much you want to buy the awesome GXP. Th dealers ain't gonna lower the price if they know!
Instead, say "G8 sucks, GXP sucks even more. Slash price please."
dal20402 2:27PM (8/31/2009)
That GXP is probably already gone.
There are about 50 to 60 left nationwide, mostly in the East, and only in certain colors (red, black, white). Most dealers are now asking a markup on them.
RMN 1:49PM (8/31/2009)
Maybe GMC should be more of a commercial company that makes trucks and commercial vehicles. The could specialize in dealing with companies to get the trucks specially configured etc. But what do i know.
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merlot066 1:51PM (8/31/2009)
I never understood why GM got rid of Pontiac and kept GMC. It should've been the other way around IMO.
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Epsilon-Not 1:55PM (8/31/2009)
From what I've heard, GMC was more profitable (or closer to profitability, perhaps, I'm not a financial expert) while Pontiac was definitely losing money... Which is a real shame, Pontiac is definitely the more interesting of the two brands to me...
inline6 2:17PM (8/31/2009)
Pontiac competed in price and model-for-model against Chevy.
It cost a lot of money to differentiate Pontiac products from Chevys so they'd get ANY street cred at all...money GM didn't have to continue investing in a brand that ultimately competed with the company's core brand...especially considering Chevy's line of SS models.
Dealers kept clamoring for more fuel-efficient small cars, too, and GM definitely didn't have the money to turn its least profitable vehicles into unique Pontiacs.
GM doesn't have to spend a ton of money to differentiate GMCs from Chevys. They sell great (and at higher prices) as it is. In fact, GMC has outsold Pontiac for more than a decade now.
So yeah...GM could either, 1) spend tons of money differentiating Pontiacs from Chevys which would squeeze their profits to do it, or 2) invest minimally by offering mild rebadges of Chevy models, but risk their cars getting no attention or respect in the market, and further ruin the brand. GM tried both. At the same time, actually.
And with as damaged a brand as Pontiac already is/was, they'd need to try #1 for the long term in order to bring back any of the lustre needed to gain people's trust and for the vehicles to start going at prices and profit margins high enough to justify all the different tooling it'd take to make a Pontiac a Pontiac.
GM didn't have that kind of money or time. So they kept the well-selling, profitable, less-damaged brand that didn't need all the investment that Pontiac would. Plus, the vehicles that GMC sells are naturally more profitable anyway than the vehicles Pontiac did.
Nightcrawler 4:14PM (8/31/2009)
"Pontiac competed in price and model-for-model against Chevy."
And GMC doesn't?
inline6 5:08PM (8/31/2009)
Nightcrawler,
You're right...GMC does, too. Thing is, GMC makes money for the company under this scheme. Pontiac didn't.
It's also worth noting that the truck market has FAR fewer entries and competitors than the passenger car market. So GMC can get away with less differentiated models in the truck sector, since there's less choice. Pontiac couldn't and mean anything as a brand at the same time. GMCs have always been lightly retrimmed Chevys. Truck buyers don't care.
Pontiac wasn't making volume on the retrimmed Chevys (G3, G5, Torrent) and they weren't making money on the differentiated models (Vibe, G6, Solstice, G8). However, GMC does make money, whether the vehicles are lightly retrimmed Chevys (Canyon, Savana), moderately differentiated (Sierra, Yukon), or well-differentiated (Acadia).