Quote:
Originally Posted by DGthe3
I don't think you understood what I was getting at (I probably didn't make it clear enough). There is a difference between total sales and a sales gain. A sales gain means that someone would not buy the Chevy but would buy the equivalent Pontiac. Lets say GM could manage to sell 160k Chevys along side 80k Pontiacs. Looks like a pretty good business case right? 80k more sales=good move. BUT of those Pontiac buyers, lets say half would have bought the Chevy if there was no Pontiac option. They like both cars, but they just like the dart better than the bowtie. So it becomes a sales gain of 40k units against a total of 200k (20%).
|
And don't worry 'bout the 40,000 who WOULDN'T?!
Put another way,
HALF the Pontiac People, who don't march over to Chev, are what? "Intenders"...who simply lost their way? More "collateral damage"?
You can "calculate" 6 ways to Sunday, but the sad fact is, "displaced" Olds and Pontiac owners will now represent a very significant number, in today's market, of (likely) lost opportunities for GM. And, as you know, it costs the Company AND Dealers a lot LESS, per customer, to SAVE/KEEP than it does to CONQUER...
It worked in Canada, post-WWII till now: Dealers = Sales, and specifically, a roughly equal number of Pontiac Stores sold very similar numbers compared to Chev, Fleet aside which, contrary to what's stated above, is still dominated by Chevrolet, within GM. Hell, some of our initial orders for Camaro were held up while they built the rental cars...more proof that the problems are GM's, NOT Pontiac's...
Reducing GM salespoints to more closely equate to sales/dealer of Toyota (the rationale used, NOT my imagination...) says more than some, here, would care to admit...
BTW, I think you'll find GM Canada was virtually always, post-WWII, a net contributor of PROFITS to GM, with veryvery few annual exceptions.