Here & There Column 3-3-09

Small Hometown Auto Dealerships Forced To Close

Many small hometown auto dealerships are being forced out of business by the auto manufacturers.
General Motors Corp, our nations biggest domestic automaker, received $13.4 billion in federal loans since December 31 but says it needs up to $30 billion to stay out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy...... but what GM is saying and doing to the small hometown dealers appears to be not very pretty.
Some dealers locally are going along with what appears to be the everyday business flow while others like Scott Lewis, president of the Chevrolet, Buick and GMC dealership (Delhi, R.H. Lewis and Son Inc.) says they are closing and "the decision was due to an increase in the cost of continuing to do business with General Motors. A letter from General Motors arrived on Christmas Eve that made excessive demands that were impossible to meet."
In conversations with several dealerships in Sullivan County criticism centered around GM's demands to take shipments of new automobiles whether the dealers wanted them or not and financing of vehicles was getting more and more difficult.
Buyers are definitely hibernating and sales of new vehicles are at a new low as a result of our economy and so another blow to local dealerships is that manufacturers are cutting promotional spending and these marketing and incentives have been a major blessing that held some dealerships together.
And yes many are saying that the automobile manufacturers have been their own worst enemy because of their past business practices.
With the economy where it is today people are just afraid to buy something big and the familiar small hometown automobile dealerships are slowly being forced out of business and made a part of our past........a past we and many others will never forget.