If it was legal, GM could have done it before bankruptcy as well. In 49 states new car can be sold only at authorized dealer. Unless, state laws change after bankruptcy, I wonder how it shall fly or not.

If only you could bid down the prices on eBay. This is going to be irrelevant when they make the reserve price the window sticker.

Sounds highly ILLEGAL to me, and gee – GM cutting the heart out of it’s dealer body yet again? I see a pattern here…

I actually see this as a smart move by GM. If they do as A4 suggested and set reserve at or near the price you find at your local dealer…then they pocket a few grand that would essentially be the dealer mark-up. Otherwise if they undercut their own dealers (which I doubt they will do…but anything is possible at this point) then the buyer saves thousands and sales will definitely increase. Either way, car companies are out to make money, and I see this as a way to do just that. And since our tax money is invested in GM it’s ultimately in our a best interest that GM starts making some real $$$.

Welcome to the future of Auto buying. I’ve seen this coming for years now, it’s the best way for companies to make money. The next step will be corporate owned dealerships, with salaried staff that doesn’t work on comission and prices will be fixed, albeit lower than what we are paying now. Consumers will win – but today’s francised owned dealerships will suffer and eventually die off.

First huge dealer cuts and now this? Are they intentionally trying to kill off all their dealerships?

If this were possible to be done profitably and legally, it would probably have already been done, since Ebay is now a household name. It seems likely that there are quite a few loopholes that need to be jumped through to do this, especially since selling through Ebay will take the money from the pockets of the states the cars are being shipped to. If it is legal to sell a significant amount of vehicles through this method, you can almost guarentee that states will do everything in their power to stop it.

GM already has Certified Used Vehicles on eBay. This service is offered to the dealer body. The dealer uploads their inventory to a GM online inventory system, and they post your CUV to Cars.com, eBay, etc… I could imagine the backbone of this service will be how they structure the new vehicles on eBay. I get the impression the consumer is still buying from the dealer, the dealer sets the prices, and that GM is not doing the retailing themselves.

interesting approach, but how do you test drive? i suppose you’d go to a dealership and test drive the car, then hop online to get the best ebay price, screwing over the dealer…because if there’s no price advantage to going the ebay route, you’d probably buy from the dealer that helped you out in the first place…

I applaud any effort to reduce human interaction because as we all know everyone else is a f*cking idiot- especially car salesmen.

It doesn’t matter how GM chooses to market their vehicles as consumer confidence, and spending has not returned to the market. GM might have been rescued (but the clock is ticking on just how long), but those who actually purchase vehicles weren’t. It’s pretzel logic at its finest.

Johnny, I wholeheartedly agree with, but you just insulted 90% of this blog. You know something? Fack’em if they can’t take a joke.

Borat, I used to be a car salesman and one of my best friends is a car salesman. Yes, you got the joke. This whole thing sucks. All this says to me is GM thinks of their dealerships more like a fast food outlet as opposed to a finer restaurant. You want fries with that?

How soon before they start selling at WalMarts?

new gm cars have been selling on ebay from dealers for years! I doubt it would help much!

if i was a dealer i’d be worried…there aren’t too many examples of products needing dealers these days, except for weed, coke, meth, heroin and cars…life as a middle man may get a bit more risky as time rolls on…if i was given the opportunity to buy straight from the manufacturer at cost + some overhead for delivery that would be tempting…

@risky_b

They are already at Sam’s Club.

This is obviously just going to be an extension of the current programs where you can buy a new car online. It still requires a dealer and a salesperson, you just have the advantage of completely eliminating the pricing portion of that interaction which is precisely what people hate about dealerships.

As for corporate owned dealerships, fixed prices and salaried salespeople? That was how Saturn started. Didn’t work out so well.

Guys, this is thru the dealerships. You go to your local dealership after you win and pick it up there and the dealership gets the profit, not GM.

So then what’s the point?

“Consumers will win – but today’s francised owned dealerships will suffer and eventually die off.”

Why not though if it makes GM profitable and lower their car prices by cutting the middleman? Plus we don’t have to deal with the annoying sales anyway. Of course I’m saying this because I just got out of the auto dealership business. Otherwise…

OK, it’s been fleshed out a little bit. Carstuff is on the right track. Mark Laneve sent out a message saying that the dealer controls the content on ebay, and that the BIN or Make an offer basically sends a lead through the one source pipe to the dealership to handle. GM is not marketing directly to the retail customer after all…

last time i check you not suppose to buying cars straight from the manufactures… That why we have dealers/distribution network in the 1st place

all in all ………. if it mean we can get the cars a a lot cheaper than what u can @ the dealer.it would be a win win for the consumers.

of course the Reserve price is going to be stricker or invoice + n %

I am an idiot

C H E E S Y

Why do it this way? Because, like Saturn showed, there is a market of buyers out there that do not want to haggle with the salestaff at a dealership. Do your bidding online w/o the stress.

Also there is a whole bunch of people buying off the internet and this may just bring those buyers into GM.

Hey it’s an experiment.

Issues will come up like how much for a trade in. etc.

9 out of 10 vehicle transactions involve a trade in. The trade in in most states like mine have a “tax offset”. That is, when you trade in the car, you get the benifit of the tax already paid on that car. Is GM going to take trade in’s now?? If the consumer tries to sell it on themselves, they don’t get the sales tax credit. When they get a car loan, they have to show the “other car ” payment as well before they sell it as a debt, and won’t qualify for the new car loan before the other is sold. Negitive equities on most car loans are in the thousands and can be absorbed with the new car transaction…but not with this process. The sticker on the window now has no meaning and this surely will be challenged in court. Customer “A” bought one on Ebay for $20,000 with a sticker of $22k, and customer “B” bought one on Ebay for $21k with a sticker of $22k….does customer “B” have legal standing to demand the same pricing as customer “A”?? This is the price fixing problem that manufactorers avoid when they use the “dealer” selling system. Dealers all pay the same price to the maker, and make or take losses with the consumer. Thus avoiding illegal price challenges. This Ebay idea only confuses most consumers and is all smoke from the “new GM”… Remember the “Ford Auto Collection” factory store experiment?? What a joke that was.

What? Sticker has no meaning?

Anyway, Fritz mentioned that the trade in will be one of the issues with this system and they are working on it.

@jdasch1

Customer “A” bought one on Ebay for $20,000 with a sticker of $22k, and customer “B” bought one on Ebay for $21k with a sticker of $22k….does customer “B” have legal standing to demand the same pricing as customer “A”??

If that happens the GM should do the same thing as Orbitz – if the same costumer buys the same exact car – example: costumer a buys a Chevrolet Malibu LS with no options for $22,000 and costumer b buys the same exact product for $21,500 – then GM should send Costumer A a check for $500.

See the problem? I think they should send the customer money back…but they won’t. Car manufactorers like other “product manufactorers” have difficulty locking in prices because of the nature of commodities. Steel, plastic, rubber and content changes may make GM over a 90 day period change the invoice price 10 times or more. They have been doing it for years as well as Ford and the others to stay competitive all the time. They call it “price levels”. Orbitz provides a service with price agreements from their vendors..not a commodity ridden product like a car. The trade in is still the linch pin, so if they want to get serious about the new “bamapricing program”, they could set up trade in centers across the country and try it all out with Ebay. The dealer will always find a way to make the deal faster and more streamlined than the maker. Manufactorers should spend their creative juices designing cool cars and leave the retailing to the capitalist system that works well. I want to be able to deal with the dealer I like, not Fritz and company.

^^ true