Government Motors: We Won’t Sell Pontiac

Not only is Government Motors making me feel sick… they’re making me feel like the Volt is damaged goods… before it even ships.

Not only did GM flatly tell me to drop dead by announcing that they had no plans to resurrect profitable Pontiac cars under another GM brand, but they just made an even more pig-headed announcement. They’ve stated that they won’t sell Pontiac, even in a Saturn-like deal where a consortium of dealerships buy out the brand.

Worse, such an offer was (and still is) on the table. A good one too, from what I hear. It appears that the federal government’s Auto Czar Committee doesn’t want to look bad, by having these brands spun off… and then watch them become successful under private leadership. I can’t see any other logical reason to refuse to sell brands that will be otherwise shuttered.

GM cites “brand identity” as being too costly for GM to deal with. Playing devil’s advocate (as best I can here), I guess their argument is that, unlike Saturn, most Pontiac dealerships sell other GM lines. But, even that doesn’t really hold water, since that’s something the Pontiac dealerships accounted for in their offer. I would assume that accounting entailed an agreement where Pontiac would adopt similar customer experience policies to GM, making customers feel transparent to the brands, regardless of owner.

Now, the last thing I want to do is call this deal dead, it isn’t… yet. GM says a lot of things, and has to go back and correct themselves later. That’s part of GM’s problem… and the Obama Administration is not helping by countermanding decisions left and right. The dealer (representing the group of dealers that submitted the offer), Jim Waldron has yet to receive a formal rejection… this is mostly PR spin from press people, and may even be grandstanding.

Why am I feeling it’s becoming more American, to buy anything but Chrysler or GM?

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