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What's Hot - Do GM Dealers "Get it"?
Can Dealers be trusted to Deliver?
4-16-04
GMinsidenews.com
Remember that bright yellow Aztek up on the pedestal in front of your local Pontiac dealership? Or the two-toned Astro conversion being hawked in a prominent place on your Chevy lot? Ever wonder why the dealership chose THAT vehicle to represent the best of the lot? What were they thinking? Maybe they were just trying to get rid of it by hoping the odd passer-by would have a thing for a baby blue Aveo sedan? Well, perhaps so, but there is no accounting for Bad Taste, especially when considering the choices dealerships make when ordering and displaying cars for their lots.
Regardless of how good a job GM's designers do of delivering attractive product on the floor of the Auto Show and in Magazines and brochures, there's no guarantee that those attractive designs, trim packages, and colors will make it to your local dealerships' lots. For a fan of GM who wants to see them succeed, this is frustrating.
Sure, you could order the color and style that best suits you, but what about the impulse buyer or cross-shopper? Or just the average Joe driving by and glancing at "Chevy's Best" displayed proudly on a platorm in front of the dealership he passes each day?
Sometimes I want to pull my hair out and wonder if the dealers "get it" at all. They're supposed to be the ones selling the cars, but I wonder if they even know what they are buying half of the time.
Take my local Chevy dealership that shall go unnamed. Being in the South, they know Trucks. They order a lot of attractive, if somewhat conservative Trucks. But when it comes to small cars, I really think they have no clue.
They recently had a small delivery of Aveos. All sedans. If memory serves, the much touted "Italian Design" of the Aveo does not extend to the sedan, only to the "5-door" hatch. From the front half back, that's not "Italian Design". It's some kind of Toyota Echo-ness that in my opinion is far from appealing. That, mixed with the Blanderization of the headlights and grille from the Daewoo Kalos, make the Aveo sedan look like the second coming of the Chevy Metro sedan - which was more of a lump than a looker. The Aveo sedan to me screams "rental car", whereas the hatch in some colors and trim levels actually looks good. And unlike the Metro of yore, they share the same engines and most of the available options.
"But its just an economy car, who cares about looks?" The truck and big sedan-centric purchasing staff at my local Chevy might say. Thinking like that almost ensures the failure of the Aveo with a percentage of its target market - "Gen Y". My guess from talking to them is that they had very little concept of what the Aveo was - and still think of the "5-door hatch" like the old Metro 5-door base vehicle -- as the bottom of the barrel, underpowered, lowest price margin version they want to stay far away from.
Since the early 1990's however, things have changed. Don't tell that to the 40+ year old purchasing staff, or the salesman disinterested in the cars he sells, however. "Why would anyone want a hatchback?" A salesman asked me. "A sedan is always preferable, and looks better." Of course, the salesman could have been saying this to me because we were standing in front of one of two of the dealership's Aveos, a baby-blue sedan I wouldn't be caught dead in. And no, I asked, there were no good looking models that had sold out and no hatches ordered - just two sedans left - the baby blue one, and a silver one with a lower trim level way in back.
It occurred to me that the baby blue Aveo might be something to advertise in the newspaper, a "loss leader" model -- the bait and switch with the ugly cutesy color. But I think not - it was right up in front.
Where is the cool electric blue 5-door that I saw at the Auto Show? I thought to myself. Then I realized that the guys who purchase the cars for the dealership probably never saw it, or again, saw "5-door" and immediately thought of those 50-horsepower, 3-cylinder Metro hatches of 10 years ago and balked.
It takes a lot more than GM propaganda literature to get Dealers to change their minds. It takes having someone with a finger on the pulse of trends in the market in the purchasing department - not someone who was hired because he/she was a good salesman, or a friend of the family. Nor should it be someone who has no interest in anything but trucks. It takes someone who knows that the youth market favors hatches now, and that my local Chevy dealership has not a one to sell to them.
Sure, there's always the next Chevy dealership, 10 or 20 miles down the road. And you might be lucky enough to live near one that picks some stellar vehicles to stock its lots with. But you won't see any electric blue Aveo hatches or stunning orange Colorados with just the right mix of trim packages rolling out of your local dealership if they don't follow the trends like we do.
Perhaps GM should offer a mild, 100 dollar incentive to dealers for ordering specific "most attractive" models/trim levels when the vehicles first hit the market (perhaps based on Auto Show model colors and options) - so when they sell well, the dealerships will know what to replace them with that works. GM could base this on customer feedback from the Auto Show. Nothing speaks to dealers like models that sell. In the meantime, my local Chevy dealer is stuck with a baby blue Aveo sedan that is gathering dust.
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Can Dealers be trusted to Deliver?
4-16-04
GMinsidenews.com
Remember that bright yellow Aztek up on the pedestal in front of your local Pontiac dealership? Or the two-toned Astro conversion being hawked in a prominent place on your Chevy lot? Ever wonder why the dealership chose THAT vehicle to represent the best of the lot? What were they thinking? Maybe they were just trying to get rid of it by hoping the odd passer-by would have a thing for a baby blue Aveo sedan? Well, perhaps so, but there is no accounting for Bad Taste, especially when considering the choices dealerships make when ordering and displaying cars for their lots.
Regardless of how good a job GM's designers do of delivering attractive product on the floor of the Auto Show and in Magazines and brochures, there's no guarantee that those attractive designs, trim packages, and colors will make it to your local dealerships' lots. For a fan of GM who wants to see them succeed, this is frustrating.
Sure, you could order the color and style that best suits you, but what about the impulse buyer or cross-shopper? Or just the average Joe driving by and glancing at "Chevy's Best" displayed proudly on a platorm in front of the dealership he passes each day?
Sometimes I want to pull my hair out and wonder if the dealers "get it" at all. They're supposed to be the ones selling the cars, but I wonder if they even know what they are buying half of the time.
Take my local Chevy dealership that shall go unnamed. Being in the South, they know Trucks. They order a lot of attractive, if somewhat conservative Trucks. But when it comes to small cars, I really think they have no clue.
They recently had a small delivery of Aveos. All sedans. If memory serves, the much touted "Italian Design" of the Aveo does not extend to the sedan, only to the "5-door" hatch. From the front half back, that's not "Italian Design". It's some kind of Toyota Echo-ness that in my opinion is far from appealing. That, mixed with the Blanderization of the headlights and grille from the Daewoo Kalos, make the Aveo sedan look like the second coming of the Chevy Metro sedan - which was more of a lump than a looker. The Aveo sedan to me screams "rental car", whereas the hatch in some colors and trim levels actually looks good. And unlike the Metro of yore, they share the same engines and most of the available options.
"But its just an economy car, who cares about looks?" The truck and big sedan-centric purchasing staff at my local Chevy might say. Thinking like that almost ensures the failure of the Aveo with a percentage of its target market - "Gen Y". My guess from talking to them is that they had very little concept of what the Aveo was - and still think of the "5-door hatch" like the old Metro 5-door base vehicle -- as the bottom of the barrel, underpowered, lowest price margin version they want to stay far away from.
Since the early 1990's however, things have changed. Don't tell that to the 40+ year old purchasing staff, or the salesman disinterested in the cars he sells, however. "Why would anyone want a hatchback?" A salesman asked me. "A sedan is always preferable, and looks better." Of course, the salesman could have been saying this to me because we were standing in front of one of two of the dealership's Aveos, a baby-blue sedan I wouldn't be caught dead in. And no, I asked, there were no good looking models that had sold out and no hatches ordered - just two sedans left - the baby blue one, and a silver one with a lower trim level way in back.
It occurred to me that the baby blue Aveo might be something to advertise in the newspaper, a "loss leader" model -- the bait and switch with the ugly cutesy color. But I think not - it was right up in front.
Where is the cool electric blue 5-door that I saw at the Auto Show? I thought to myself. Then I realized that the guys who purchase the cars for the dealership probably never saw it, or again, saw "5-door" and immediately thought of those 50-horsepower, 3-cylinder Metro hatches of 10 years ago and balked.
It takes a lot more than GM propaganda literature to get Dealers to change their minds. It takes having someone with a finger on the pulse of trends in the market in the purchasing department - not someone who was hired because he/she was a good salesman, or a friend of the family. Nor should it be someone who has no interest in anything but trucks. It takes someone who knows that the youth market favors hatches now, and that my local Chevy dealership has not a one to sell to them.
Sure, there's always the next Chevy dealership, 10 or 20 miles down the road. And you might be lucky enough to live near one that picks some stellar vehicles to stock its lots with. But you won't see any electric blue Aveo hatches or stunning orange Colorados with just the right mix of trim packages rolling out of your local dealership if they don't follow the trends like we do.
Perhaps GM should offer a mild, 100 dollar incentive to dealers for ordering specific "most attractive" models/trim levels when the vehicles first hit the market (perhaps based on Auto Show model colors and options) - so when they sell well, the dealerships will know what to replace them with that works. GM could base this on customer feedback from the Auto Show. Nothing speaks to dealers like models that sell. In the meantime, my local Chevy dealer is stuck with a baby blue Aveo sedan that is gathering dust.
