"Another problem with combining dealerships is the overlap of similar vehicles. For example, if you merge Buick and Pontiac outlets you end up with two versions of the same minivan and two versions of the same sport utility vehicle in one showroom. I think that the similarity with Chrysler models contributed greatly to the demise of Plymouth. Why should a dealer sell a Plymouth Voyager minivan when, for about the same price, a customer can be steered into a Chrysler Town and Country? The combining of dealerships is a self-defeating practice and only contributes to making American brands less competitive against foreign nameplates that pamper customers at exclusive dealerships. The best tactic is to build desirable vehicles that sell in large enough volume to support an exclusive dealer organization."

"Maybe there is another reason--something that Detroit executives are reluctant to discuss. If GM decides to kill a division, such as Buick or Pontiac, the dealers don't have to go out of business."

Don't forget that GM had to pay out hundreds of millions to Olds dealers when they killed off Oldsmobile. This may be a way to get around lawsuits if they did kill another division, like Buick or Pontiac.


http://www.forbes.com/columnists/columnists/2005/05/03/cz_jf_0503flint.html

All true Ralph. I think GM was mainly trying to consolidate for cost savings though. Sharing parts departments, service departments, sales staff etc. all adds up when you figure the number of dealerships across the country. Also, figure on how much it costs GM to ship parts, cars etc. to all the dealerships. Combining whould show a great savings here as well. On top of all that, I think there is also the idea that if a customer comes into a Buick dealer and isn't able to find a car that suits them, they "may" find one in the Pontiac line, or Chevy line. The more choices the customer has under one roof, the better chance GM has of making a sale. I think they figure if the customer leaves, chances are good he may end up at a competitor's lot before another GM lot. And there's also the added feature of introducing the consumer to the idea that GM IS Chevy, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac, etc, etc, etc. which is something a lot of people don't know.

I guess in the U.S. you can have a Toyota dealership in the same building as the Cadillac dealership? That's not allowed here and if those two dealerships were on the same lot, they have to have seperate buildings here.

I've also noticed MANY Americans talking of "poor Cadillac service" and I think it might have to do with too many "strange bedfellows" sharing the same building like Toyota and Buick, for example. Here, our Cadillac dealership shares the same building with Pontiac and Buick. I think if it shared with Honda also, that would somehow take away the specialization of the servicemen who are needed to service a Cadillac or GM vehicle.

Just a thought.

Because of what happened with Oldsmobile and the payouts GM had to do for Olds dealers, killing Pontiac or buick would KILL GM.

I don't think Buick would be missed TOO much. I mean, the Park Avenue is gone and the mini van and suv are *basically* just chevy/pontiac/saturns:p in disguise as buicks.

I suppose that if Cadillac didn't sell anything under $40,000, then Buick would be feasible, but since the CTS cuts into Buick's market.....WHo wants a Buick when you can have a Caddy CTS?:devil:

Pontiac, on the other hand, would be a big loss. Symbolically(sp?) anyway. I mean, it wouldn't be that bad of a loss if the Aztek just went away:devil:, but losing the brand as a whole would be bad. However, GM isn't doing anything quickly enough about this situation. Pontiac needs to LOSE the Aztek and the Montana, the Sunfire needs to go too since we have the Cobalt now. Phase out these cars that are "overlappers" and trim the fat off the Pontiac line up. Pontiac would be good with just the Solstice, G6, Bonneville, and GTO. Since the Grand Am was replaced by the G(rand Am)6 it can go and the Grand Prix can go too since its just a sedan version of the Grand Am.

So we have the GTO, G6 (coupe, sedan, convertible), Solstice, Bonneville, and MAYBE the Vibe. Thats only about 4 cars and they all cover a pretty wide range while keeping Pontiac a sexy, performance division. Pontiac doesn't need to be selling budget cars, they need to be competing against Mazda, since the Mazda6 is probably the most exciting car in that market range and it could go up against the G6. The Miata vs. the Solstice, the RX-8 vs. the GTO, etc.

I don't think Buick would be missed TOO much. I mean, the Park Avenue is gone and the mini van and suv are *basically* just chevy/pontiac/saturns:p in disguise as buicks.

I suppose that if Cadillac didn't sell anything under $40,000, then Buick would be feasible, but since the CTS cuts into Buick's market.....WHo wants a Buick when you can have a Caddy CTS?:devil:

Pontiac, on the other hand, would be a big loss. Symbolically(sp?) anyway. I mean, it wouldn't be that bad of a loss if the Aztek just went away:devil:, but losing the brand as a whole would be bad. However, GM isn't doing anything quickly enough about this situation. Pontiac needs to LOSE the Aztek and the Montana, the Sunfire needs to go too since we have the Cobalt now. Phase out these cars that are "overlappers" and trim the fat off the Pontiac line up. Pontiac would be good with just the Solstice, G6, Bonneville, and GTO. Since the Grand Am was replaced by the G(rand Am)6 it can go and the Grand Prix can go too since its just a sedan version of the Grand Am.

So we have the GTO, G6 (coupe, sedan, convertible), Solstice, Bonneville, and MAYBE the Vibe. Thats only about 4 cars and they all cover a pretty wide range while keeping Pontiac a sexy, performance division. Pontiac doesn't need to be selling budget cars, they need to be competing against Mazda, since the Mazda6 is probably the most exciting car in that market range and it could go up against the G6. The Miata vs. the Solstice, the RX-8 vs. the GTO, etc.


I dont like the G6, but agree it has its place in the lineup,the rest of your argument is spot on. Eliminate Buick, give Pontiac a GMT360 (I dont like this platform much at all, but it would be working with what already exists) Based performance oriented SUV like the TrailBlazer SS and you have a fully rounded lineup.

Ben, Ian and to the author at Forbes are all forgetting one thing, here it is from an old post of mine.....

"the no-competition between GM brands
is an actual corporate policy at General Motors, and has been for 15 years.

If Cadillac produced a bare-bones version of the CTS (with a correspondingly
lower price), IT WOULD PUT IT INTO BUICK'S PRICE RANGE. If that happened,
General Motors would be overlapping its product ranges, and therefore
wasting money to engineer 2 cars instead of 1. In the old days, when each
GM division had its own product planning team, this often happened, and it
was decided (around 1990) that it was too wasteful.

I really don't get what the one guy was saying about GM gaining if people
bought the 'more expensive' car. The point is that a cheap CTS would be THE
SAME PRICE as a Buick and would be redundant. GM gains if someone buys a
Caddy over a Lexus. GM gains if they buy a Buick over a Lexus. But GM
doesn't gain if they buy a Caddy over a Buick - it just means the company's
spent more money engineering a second car."

"The weird thing is that BMW should've learned that lesson. Remember when
they bought MG Rover ten years ago? Suddenly they had to worry about the
3-Series competing with high-end Rovers. So they kept Mini, positioning it
at the bottom end of the market, and bought Rolls-Royce for the top end, and
the BMW brand covered everything in the middle. But now they're coming out
with a 1-Series which looks like it'll overlap with the Mini ..."

For comparison's sake..

GM COULD NOT survive another loss of either Pontiac or Buick just because of the sueing and money owed alone would again be in the hundreds of millions! (like what happened after Oldsmobile's demise) And think of Wall Street more carefully before just saying "Buick should die!" THINK guys! Look at the Japanese??? Do they just give up?? A car company should look seriously at the problems and FIX THEM.

"Detroit sees some advantages in consolidating its dealerships. As the sales from U.S. nameplates have declined, it is a way of building volume and holding on to dealers. And it could be that Buick has far too many dealers relative to the 310,000 cars and SUVs that it sold last year. The feeling is that it is better to keep dealers in the corporate family, so it is more palatable to combine Buick with Pontiac rather than have those Buick dealers add an outside line such as Suzuki."

The problem is, knowing GM, even if they could stage some sort of major turnaround for Buick, I am willing to bet that in another 15 years time it would once again get homogenized with the rest of the brands. There are far too many as I see it. I want GM to be profitable, not just have the most brands.

A perfect example of what Im talking about is the fact that the Sigma platform which had been left alone for a few years, is now being poked and prodded to possibly spawn offspring for the Buick and Pontiac brands. That is a very dangerous game because there is only so much you can engineer and re-engineer a platform like that before you are once again the same old rut, and then you will have dragged Cadillac in the muck again.

Its like retreading an old truck tire, it works for a while, but eventually the whole thing is just going to blow.

The problem is, knowing GM, even if they could stage some sort of major turnaround for Buick, I am willing to bet that in another 15 years time it would once again get homogenized with the rest of the brands. There are far too many as I see it. I want GM to be profitable, not just have the most brands.

A perfect example of what Im talking about is the fact that the Sigma platform which had been left alone for a few years, is now being poked and prodded to possibly spawn offspring for the Buick and Pontiac brands. That is a very dangerous game because there is only so much you can engineer and re-engineer a platform like that before you are once again the same old rut, and then you will have dragged Cadillac in the muck again.

Its like retreading an old truck tire, it works for a while, but eventually the whole thing is just going to blow.

I think that GM can have a lot of divisions, because that never stopped them in the past. The problem is that they simply make too many cars now, with an excess amount of factories they always have to close down, and then they can't sell them all.

Also, platform sharing is how they can be profitable without creating a new one at the cost of millions every couple of years imo.

Killing brands is rarely a good idea, especially the way the automotive market is now. When GM killed Oldsmobile, buyers didn't migrate to Buick or Pontiac, they went elsewhere. Brand loyalty doesn't really exist anymore. So even though Oldsmobile sales had fallen from 1 million in the early 1990s to about 400,000 at the end of the decade, that's still a lot of market share for GM to give up.

Losing Buick would be more than a "symbolic" loss. Those customers might never come back.

The point of brands is what you can potentially do with them. It's what Buick or Pontiac COULD be in the future, based on how people remember them from the past. That's one reason why VW Group resurrected Bugatti or why GM is now selling another GTO. If you build interesting cars that properly exploit a brand's heritage or sense of style, etc, you'll have customers in the showroom. But if you neglect or starve a brand, like Chrysler did to Plymouth, sooner or later you get people saying "who cares?".

Look how much it costs to establish a new brand. The bank vaults of money poured into Saturn are a testament to that.

So quite honestly, GM has more to gain by re-investing in its various brands, as they've done with Cadillac. They could've taken the easy way out a few years ago and simply killed the division, but they didn't. They spent the money (even though it was billions) and are now reaping the benefits. The danger for GM is that they often look for the cheapest way to do something rather than spend the money to do it right.

GM once had a coherent brand strategy, and if they were wise, could have again.

Losing Buick would be more than a "symbolic" loss. Those customers might never come back.

That's because they'll be six feet under!

That's because they'll be six feet under!

Actually, Toyota's demographics are nearly as old as Buick's (or will be in a few years), yet they still make billions. But they've created yet another brand, Scion, to start getting some younger customers. Of course, it's older buyers who in fact have the spare cash to spend, which is why Cadillac has kept the DTS in its lineup.

But Buick wasn't always a car aimed at older buyers. And it probably shouldn't be now.