Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...industry will hit a post-bankruptcy tipping point around Labor Day. Chrysler will be several months into its Chapter 11, and, unless there is a miracle like one seen at Lourdes, GM will be in court within two or three weeks. It will appear to the public that the car industry is burning to the ground. Desperate dealers offering prices that defy logic will only heighten the sense that the American car business is just hanging on to the ledge...
...doing it in a more orderly fashion. Customers might have been encouraged to stay if the manufacturers offered special financing on cars owned by shuttered dealers. It would have been a good way to pick up or save a new car buyer. It would have created some goodwill. GM and Chrysler could also have introduced customers to dealers that are staying open in their part of the country. They could have offered a year's free maintenance to build a bond between a dealer that is not just around the corner and a customer that could buy a car from...
...GM and Chrysler did not make a single intelligent move as they told dealers that they would be closed. Customers and potential customers got to learn about what happened to the local GM or Chrysler franchise by reading it in the paper. The two manufacturers may have forgotten that many of the owners of dealerships are community business leaders in their hometowns. They may be a large part of the local tax base. They may go to church with the next twenty people who will buy cars in the town where the dealer is located. (See ten things you should...
...GM and Chrysler will face a bloody competition with many of their own dealers this summer. Both will try to sell cars in the midst of an awful market. The closing dealers do not have much to lose by dumping their inventories and shutting their doors as fast as they can to save operating costs. The 2010 models may be lost in the shuffle of ridiculous deals to clear out 2009 editions. The dealers being closed may be going away, but in the process they will inflict real pain on the companies that shut them down...
...course, with the federal government pouring billions into U.S. automakers like GM, those executives may have little choice but to get on board. And there are still nagging concerns that new fuel-economy standards alone won't be enough to wean Americans from their gas guzzlers. Since gas prices fell during the recession, consumers' appetite for compacts and hybrids has dwindled, and sales of large SUVs are once again ticking upward. If gas prices stayed relatively low between now and 2016 - which is unlikely - automakers could end up producing cars and trucks that Americans won't be eager...