As a result of the stop-sale of 1.3 million crossovers, General Motors dealerships all over the country are heading into the busy Memorial Day weekend unable to move some of their hottest-selling vehicles off the lot.
GM announced earlier this week it was recalling Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Chevrolet Traverse crossovers built between 2009-2014 for a faulty seat belt cable which may wear out and eventually break, increasing the risk of an injury in the event of a crash. Dealers can’t sell the vehicles until they are fixed, but GM says the required parts are “not available at this time”. It has not given an estimate as to when they may be available.
According to Automotive News, dealers can still close sales on the vehicles with customers, but no deliveries can be made. That will be hard with potential customers unable to take a test drive, and the fact it is recalled may turn them off of the vehicle all together.
This recall is hurting dealers more than others are as the Lambda-based SUVs, such as the Enclave, are the top sellers at many dealerships. David Ferraez, a dealer principal at Green Brook Buick-GMC in Green Brook, N.J. told AN he has more than 170 Acadias and Enclaves on his lot and they are the highest-volume nameplates at his store. He plans to “aggressively work deals and sell them” even though the crossovers can’t be delivered. He also said he would offer loaner vehicles to those buyers if they want it.
“We can’t be out of business with our No. 1 product in one of our busiest times of year,” Ferraez said. “I’m nervous about it, but we’ll be proactive.”
GM yesterday rolled out its end-of-the-month dealer bonus program, which will pay up to $1,000 in dealer bonus cash for retail sales of 2013-15 Chevrolet models sold between through to June 2. Buick and GMC are also running a similar program.
Comments
From what our dealership has been told, this is a “inspection” process at this time. We are to inspect the vehicle and if the cable is fine, we can sell the vehicle. If the cable is not fine, we can’t until the fix is installed once GM has a fix. The ones that were fine will be recalled for the update once the parts are available.
The problem is that GM has not give the dealerships any details to the inspection process, claim codes for work orders, etc and we don’t know when we will get them.
From the details we have found, it sound like the cable is only an issue due to certain environmental issues such as living in high salt content areas like around the Great Lakes or oceans, plus the vehicles need to be a few years old in order for the salt to create the issue over time, etc.
So this “Stop Sale” is another one of GM’s recent over-reactions because they are not giving the “Stop Driving” notification to customers who already own them. They will be doing a recall once parts are available. So why do a “Stop Sale” if we only need to inspect the vehicle and current owners are still allowed to drive them?
But GM is in a no-win situation; issue the stop delivery now and lose sales and dealerships are hurt and the media says “GM issuing a stop delivery and have no fix!” or wait until the new parts are available and then do a recall only to have the media blow things up with “GM knew about this issue 3 mths ago and did nothing!”
See, no-win situation!
will this affect production at Lansing Delta and if so what do you think will be the timeframe why add to existing inventory if dealer not able to create new sales