AutoNation CEO gives GM's Wagoner support

[FISH]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...SS01/604130401

April 13, 2006
BY SARAH A. WEBSTER


The nation's largest car dealer, Mike Jackson, CEO of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based AutoNation Inc., said General Motors Corp. is in good hands with Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and thinks the automaker will be back on its feet within a year or two.

Even though GM's sales are down 5.2% this year and Wagoner has been under increased public pressure to perform, there are signs the company's new effort to price vehicles closer to transaction prices is healing GM's wounds, Jackson told the Free Press this week.

"This is a stronger strategy," said Jackson, a former Mercedes-Benz executive who advocated that GM move to the strategy a year ago. "Clearly, selling the incentive was not working."

Jackson, whose company operates 345 new-vehicle franchises in 17 states, said GM is getting consumers to pay more for vehicles and consumers favor this tactic over high prices that get reduced with a confusing array of haggling, incentives, bonuses and other discounts.

GM might even benefit, he said, from cutting their prices even more.

"If that's what the marketplace tells them, then that's what they need to do," said Jackson, whose company gets about 43% of its revenues from vehicles made by GM, Ford Motor Co. or the Chrysler Group. AutoNation had revenue of $19.3 billion last year

Jackson's public backing of Wagoner comes less than a week after his company and several other large dealership companies, including the Bloomfield Hills-based UnitedAuto Group Inc., placed a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying they supported Wagoner.

"America loves a good...

Continued:http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...SS01/604130401

[asim]

Cool, we ALL need the support.