Filed under: Cadillac (http://v4.sandbox.autoblog.com/category/cadillac/), GM (http://v4.sandbox.autoblog.com/category/gm/)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/06/caddy_closings.jpg (http://www.autonews.com/article/20090608/ANA03/306089920)

Cadillac is one of the core brands that will form the new General Motors, but the dealership network can't continue in its current guise, according to GM sales head Mark LaNeve. There are 1,422 Cadillac dealers nationwide, more than four times the number of Mercedes-Benz dealers and more than six times the number of Lexus dealers. That kind of saturation meant that in 2008, the average Cadillac dealership did one-sixth the business of a Mercedes dealer and one-tenth the business of a Lexus dealer.

To be fair, Cadillac has fewer cars on offer than Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus. Still, GM wants to gets its dealer volume numbers closer that of the competition - proportionally speaking - and that means more dealer closings. GM hasn't said how many, but to even get close to retail parity they'd be looking at many hundreds of closures, with many of them likely to be in metropolitan areas. Whenever those dealers are chosen, as with the others, they will be allowed to remain open until their franchise agreements on October 31, 2010.

[Source: Automotive News (http://www.autonews.com/article/20090608/ANA03/306089920) - Sub. Req.]Under Fire: GM targeting metropolitan Cadillac dealers for closure? (http://v4.sandbox.autoblog.com/2009/06/09/under-fire-gm-targets-cadillac-dealers-for-closure/) originally appeared on Autoblog (http://v4.sandbox.autoblog.com) on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).



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When at one of the only two Cadillac dealers in the county, I was told by the Cadillac salesperson that they and the other dealer had both lost their franchises. Shortly, anyone wishing to buy a new Cadillac will be forced to drive at least 45 minutes to the nearest dealer. One dealer here has been selling Cadillac for at least 40 years and has a good reputation; the other dealer is part of huge conglomoration of makes and models that sells under one name but in several locations around the state. Go figure...

This does not make sense.

The US is Cadillac's home country, so there is suppose to be more dealers than a foreign car manufacturer. The US is a number of times larger than Germany, and especially Japan. Most dealers who sell Cadillac's sell other names like Buick, Pontiac, Volvo and such.

Politics...