General Motors recently began giving all of its U.S. Buick-GMC and Cadillac lease incentives to its captive finance arm GM Financial. The move removed the ability of other financial lenders — such as Ally and U.S. Bank — to use the incentives, and took Ally CEO Michael Carpenter by surprise.
“We were not surprised by the idea of GM growing their captive. We were surprised they would exclude any competition in the lease space,” Carpenter said. “We will compete with anybody on a head-to-head basis. What pisses us off is when we don’t get to compete on a heads-up basis.”
The change will likely put Ally at a disadvantage and make it less competitive when it comes to leases, but Carpenter said that the financial lender-turned-bank will be able to compensate for the change.
Even so, industry analysts and those close to the automotive lending arena are questioning the way in which GM went about pulling the incentives and not notifying Ally, essentially terminating a good relationship in a bad way. To note, The General didn’t give Ally, previously known as GMAC, an advanced notice of the lease incentive revision, thereby raising eyebrows about the way in which the automaker ends a portion of a long-standing relationship with a long-time partner. GMAC, or General Motors Acceptance Corporation, served as GM’s own captive finance arm thru 2006; it helped GM at a few critical times, especially after GM exited bankruptcy.
But what is perhaps the proverbial icing on the cake is that today, Ally continues to operate out of Tower 200 of GM’s global headquarters, the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan. So all GM had to do is send Ally a memo to the tower next door informing it of the lease incentive changes. That would have been much better than to blindside a long-time business partner. Agreed?
Comments
Better Pissed Off then Pissed On the way I see it!!! 😉
Kind of reminds me of GM’s treatment of it’s parts suppliers in the past . They bring in Lieblein , as VP , to straighten out that mess and repair relations….so now do they send her over to Ally(GMAC) to mend this gaff ? Where is this brilliant engineer , anyway , haven’t heard from her for a while now . She was head of the GM south American division , I believe , then appointed VP in the USA to fix and upgrade the suppliers relations and performance , about last May . Lately , the reins were turned over to another person , it appears , and she kind of disappears , where are you Ms Lieblein ???
Grace Lieblein is over quality now:
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2014/11/gm-announces-leadership-changes-in-quality-customer-experience-purchasing-supply-chain-powertrain-executive-shuffle/
This statement is incorrect:
“GMAC, or General Motors Acceptance Corporation, served as GM’s own captive finance arm thru 2006”,
because I bought my 2009 Chevy Equinox in March 2009 through GMAC and I have the papers to prove it. GMAC became Ally in 2010, and every GMAC customer were notified. And after that I paid onlie through Ally’s web page until the loan was cancelled, and the vehicle title was sent to me last year. The title still says “GMAC” on it.
Your correction is incorrect 😉
The fact that you bought your vehicle in 2009 and financed it using GMAC in 2009 does not mean that it was GM’s captive finance arm in 2009.
GMAC was bailed out by the U.S. Government and was no longer GM’s property starting in 2007. This means that it was no longer GM’s captive or owned by GM starting in 2007. So the statement by GMA is actually correct. All you are pointing out is that the name was still GMAC, which isn’t realy relevant.