New Used Car Dealers

[Luv2play]

I was reading about the closing of hundreds of Chrysler dealerships in the next several weeks and reflected on the social implications for the dealers involved. One of the criteria for closing a dealership was if it sold more used cars than new ones. A lot of dealers feel betrayed by Chrysler in the way they were treated up until they got their closure notices. For instance, Chrysler was urging them to buy more new vehicles to help the company keep going and now these dealers who are facing closure in several weeks are on the hook for these vehicles they didn't want in the first place in the middle of a recession.

 

Several of the dealers contacted by the press indicated they would continue as used car dealers although they would have to cut staff in order to survive. Some of these indicated that several financial institutions had already dropped them since they would no longer be selling new cars. I wonder if they might not lose other relationships.

 

Used car dealerships always seemed a little shady to me. They seemed to exist in the poorer parts of town and on the edges of cities, never in the upscale neighbourhoods. Their salesmen were not to be trusted and tales abounded of consumers getting the shaft buying vehicles that had had the odometers turned back or had been involved in undisclosed accidents. You even wondered if some of their cars had not been stolen.

 

New car dealers were an entirely different breed. They were the pillars of the community, big donors to local charities, members of the best country clubs and generally considered as part of the elite business establishment. I knew a kid when I was young whose dad owned a chain of GM dealerships. He was a spoiled boy (beautiful too). Never worked a day in his relatively short life.

 

This guy could walk into a gay bar and have his choice of anyone practically, a scene I once witnessed when he was visiting me in Europe when I was living there. Unfortunately his easy ways got him in trouble and he contracted AIDS before the wonder medicines came along which would have saved him.

 

I don't know if his father will become a used car dealer as the fate of GM is still up in the air. I know he wouldn't have liked the prospect.

[KMEM]

Do you also think attorneys and politicians are OK so long as they deal in "correct" subjects?

 

JK. Good folks are where you find them.

 

I feel disappointed by how everyone involved in the car "mess" has been treated. We now have Government Motors as well as failed Chrysler. And, Ford is being pressed to behave and do what they are told to do. We don't need the government running our lives to this extent. I am sorry to say, it will only get worse.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

 

PS--I happen to know some good folks who sell used cars. Want an intro?

[JT Brooklyn]

USED Car Dealers

 

Do you also think attorneys and politicians are OK so long as they deal in "correct" subjects?

 

JK. Good folks are where you find them.

 

I feel disappointed by how everyone involved in the car "mess" has been treated. We now have Government Motors as well as failed Chrysler. And, Ford is being pressed to behave and do what they are told to do. We don't need the government running our lives to this extent. I am sorry to say, it will only get worse.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

 

PS--I happen to know some good folks who sell used cars. Want an intro?

CARFAX with a VIN # would be a good way to go. Alot of USED CAR Dealers provide them also.

[Guest bernardff]

Could the government do much worse?

GM Screwed the employees' benefits,screwed the dealers,screwed the consumers with poor quality,infantile, inappropriate products,and incidently held to ransom various countries with their investment policy.GM and Chrysler have been on the government tit for quite a while,maybe a shakeup is overdue.?

[KMEM]

Absolutely, the government can do much worse. I don't think you are a US taxpayer but the ones of us who are are now on the hook for the whole enchilada.

 

When businesses fail in the US, many times the merciful thing to do is let them go out of business but our current laws allow for reorganizaion or organized liquidation aka bankruptcy. That is the legal remedy. What we are having now is a political remedy, if indeed it is a remedy.

 

Best regards,

KMEM