Contest is Underway!

Dealerships Giving Away 10,000 Gallons of Gas This Weekend

The Bob Smith Automotive Group is taking on the gas crisis and helping you keep your tank and wallet filled! This weekend, the Bob Smith Automotive Group will register visitors to win 10,000 Gallons of Gas at the GM Giant in Easton and Giant GMC in Federalsburg.

The first 1,000 participants will be eligible to take a chance to win 10,000 Gallons of Gas- a whole 18 wheel tanker truck full of gas. Participants enter a 5 digit code in the bank vault and the correct entry will spring open the vault. The winner will receive a pre-paid credit card for $40,000- since the contest was orchestrated when gas was still $4/gallon! Today, it is actually worth 11,765 gallons of gas… enough gas to last the average person 24 years!

Visitors can register at the GM Giant, on Route 50 in Easton, or Giant GMC on Federalsburg Highway in Federalsburg, starting at 10am on Friday, Saturday, and Monday. A tanker truck from Tri Gas & Oil will be placed at the dealership in Easton with a banner facing Route 50 traffic promoting the sweepstakes.

The promotion is part of the Labor Day “Employee Pricing for Everyone” sale currently being offered by General Motors through September 2, 2008. Complete rules and details available at www.gmgiant.com. The contest is limited to the first 850 participants in Easton and the first 150 participants in Federalsburg. It is possible to have different winners at each location.

GM is Offering Employee Pricing For Everyone!

You Could Win 10,000 Gallons of Gas at the GM Giant!

Well, I told you last week that GM would be using the 100th anniversary of their company as a catalyst for sales promotions. Well the grand daddy of them all just got announced. GM is offering GM employee discounts to everyone on 90% of their inventory. That means that consumers can buy new GM cars and trucks for less than we pay for them as dealers and still take off rebates up to $6,000. That means you can save over $10,000 on some of our most popular models.

The last time GM did this was in 2005. GM’s sales rose to record levels over a short period of time and were blamed for much of the slow down in early 2006. Many automotive analysts felt that GM ran the promotion too long and pulled sales ahead at such a high rate that there simply were no customers left to buy the next year. GM must have learned from this because they have announced that it will only offer these prices through September 2nd.

One thing is different this time though. Right now industry experts say that slow sales over the past two years have created pent up demand in the area of 7 million vehicles. If this is right, the employee pricing tied to incredible rebates could create a sales bonanza.

GM’s product is the best in its history in quality, styling and fuel economy. Experts tell us that past perception of GM and other domestics have caused 40 percent of car and truck buyers to stay away from GM. That is to say that they won’t even consider GM. Industry experts now say the GM’s cars and trucks are world class, and in many cases the best in the world. If employee pricing gets customers to test drive GM cars and trucks, it could be just what the doctor ordered to jump start GM’s recovery.

GM already has the most vehicles to get over 30 mpg highway. Cars like the new Chevy Malibu and Cadillac CTS are taking the market by storm, and the buff magazines are saying things like, “imports beware” and “here come the Camry killers”.

I promised to write about GM’s history as part of my articles on the GM 100th anniversary. I was going to pick up where Billy Durant took over as the President of GM for the second time, but historically, this week’s announcement by GM of this new pricing strategy could be just as historically important as David Chevrolet’s first car. Drive Safely. Visit us at www.gmgiant.com for more information and to see how you could win 10,000 gallons of gas during the GM Giant Labor Day Event.

GM is 100 Years Old This Year!

It will be hard not to know GM is 100 years old this year as the world’s largest automaker will use this historical event as the catalyst for celebratory sales events over the weeks and months to come. I will write about the history of GM in a series of Did You Know articles over the next several weeks. Facts about GM’s roots in Americana should amaze you as they did me in my research. I hope you enjoy.

GM was founded in 1908 as a holding company for Buick Motor Company by William C. (Billy) Durant in Flint Michigan. But Buick dates back to 1899 when David Dunbar Buick built the first Buick Motorcar. David Buick was regarded as a dreamer at the time, but one year after it’s incorporation in 1903, Buick became the best selling car in the U.S. Buick, a company that actually started as a gasoline engine manufacturer, developed the first overhead valve engine that delivered an incredible 29 horsepower. Buick rose to prominence in race car circles with dominant horsepower and a race car driver by the name of Louis Chevrolet. Chevrolet would become GM’s post war president and CEO, and together with Durant would found the company bearing his name.

As a division of General Motors, Buick would be known as an innovator in technology and became famous for the first mass production V6 engine. The 231 cubic inch V6 developed by Buick is still the basic design used in today’s GM V6 engines.

GM was founded on September 16, 1908 in Flint, Michigan, and acquired Oldsmobile later that year. The next year Durant brought in Cadillac, Cartercar, Elmore, Ewing, and Oakland (later known as Pontiac). In 1909 GM also acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessors of GMC Truck. A Rapid became the first truck to conquer Pikes Peak in 1909. Welch and Rainer were added to the ever-growing list of companies. In 1910 Durant lost control of the company to Bankers Trust due to the vast debt incurred through his acquisitions. Durant left to form Chevrolet with Race Car Driver Louis Chevrolet.

In 1916 with the backing of Pierre S. DuPont, Durant after a brilliant stock purchase scheme took the helm of GM once again. DuPont became the Chairman of the Board and the corporate acquisitions resumed on both sides of the ocean.

This is where I will pick it up next week. Until then, drive safely. Visit our website at www.gmgiant.com. Much of the information in this article came from Wikipedia.org.

The US Press Has a Bias Against US Automakers!

One of the reasons I write these articles is to combat the media bias against American automakers. I admit, I am biased in favor of US automakers. But as I watched CNN’s Miles O’Brien’s segment Thursday (7/17/08) on electric cars my blood began to boil. He was driving some remnants of an era when Toyota and GM were making electric vehicles for use in California when that state was mandating the sale of zero emission vehicles. He reported accurately that GM took the lead in developing the EV1 electric car that they leased to consumers in California. He made a big deal out of GM “repossessing the EV1’s and destroying them”, while he was able to drive one of about 100 Toyota Rav 4 electric vehicles left in America. The fact is that GM took possession of the EV1 vehicles at the end of their leases, they were not repossesses in the connotation of the word repossess as it is commonly used in the banking and automotive world. GM leased these expensive to build electric cars to consumers, much like Honda is doing today with their hydrogen fuel cell offering. Further GM destroyed the vehicles as did Toyota, a point that he barely mentions at the conclusion of the piece, because by law if they did not, they would be forced to support the product for 10 years making parts available and following any mandates from the National Highway and Traffic Administration. He went on to ask his guest why he thought GM destroyed the EV1 vehicles; who suggested that it was done to protect the value of their other vehicle offerings.

If this wasn’t enough, O’Brien said that US automakers don’t offer electric vehicles. Now while it is true that the US automakers do not have electric vehicles for sale today, neither do the imports. And he never made mention of the Chevy Volt plug in electric hybrid scheduled to go on sale in 2010. This is an electric hybrid that runs 40 miles on electricity alone and is supported by a gasoline engine for longer trips. He could have mentioned the Hydrogen Fuel powered Chevy Equinox, now being driven in LA, DC and New York.

I am getting sick and tired of the US press saying that Detroit doesn’t make cars and trucks consumers want to buy. I hear this over and over again on CNN, CBS and NBC news casts. They said this when Ford’s F150 was the best selling vehicle in America. While GM’s sales are down they still are the best selling manufacturer in America. Does that mean the consumers who buy their cars are insignificant? Sales of high mileage vehicles are increasing, driven by higher fuel prices, but not everyone can drive a compact car. You hear very little about GM’s full size Hybrid SUV’s that get 20mpg in city driving.

Whenever one of the US automakers has a recall or a vehicle challenge, it makes the front page of the newspaper and is all over the television news. Has anyone heard or read about Toyota buying back thousands of Tacoma pickup trucks because the frames are rusting through. I never heard about it in the press, I learned it from a Toyota dealer who happens to be a Chevy dealer as well. I confirmed by doing a Google search for “Toyota Tacoma Rust”.

The media touts Toyota as the fuel economy King. AOL did a study on overall fuel economy by brand. Chevrolet came in third overall including their truck fleet. Honda won but by only a few tenths of a mile per gallon over Chevy, and they have only one truck in their fleet. Toyota came in tenth. Now AOL is owned by Time Warner, the same company that owns CNN, but you never saw this on American Morning. Using Google, I also learned about things like the class action suit consumers brought against Toyota for engine sludge and other things about the imports that go unreported or barely reported. It is just not popular to report bad things about the darling imports and good things about the Big Bad Three from Detroit.

I think the popularity of bashing Detroit is a subliminal reaction of Americans who are disappointed that in the past the US automakers built inferior products to the imports. But today that is different. Today GM builds cars with superior quality. GM has more models that get 30 miles per gallon highway than any other manufacturer, but you won’t hear that on CNN. Thanks for letting me vent. It is good therapy. Drive safely.

Cadillac & Buick Beat Out Lexus And Mercedes in Service Satisfaction!

Cadillac finished second and Buick finished third behind Jaguar in JD Power’s Service Satisfaction Survey. On a scale of 0 to 1,000 Jaguar scored an impressive 923 points followed by Cadillac at 922 and Buick at 919. Lexus finished fourth at 915 points. Chevrolet finished 12th beating Mercedes Benz who came in 20th place just above industry average. Toyota finished below industry average coming in 11 places from last place. The bottom 12 performers were Porsche, Toyota, Land Rover, Dodge, Jeep, Nisan, Mazda, Suzuki, Scion, Kia, Volkswagen and last place goes to Suzuki. The top 12 are Jaguar, Cadillac, Buick, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercury, Acura, Infinity, BMW, Honda, Saturn and Chevrolet. All GM brands finished above industry average and ahead of Mercedes Benz.

In a press release on July 17, 2008 JD Power said, “Cadillac improves by one position rank for 2008…This is attributable to particularly high levels of satisfaction among repair customers. Buick has strong performance... and its continuing efforts to improve quality have resulted in a decreasing incidence
of repair visits among the brands customers.”

The study found that communication with the customer after the services were received had a notably strong impact on customer satisfaction particularly through improving customers perception of fairness of charges and the value of services received. Customers contacted after services were performed scored their dealers an average of 100 points higher than those who were not contacted.

At the GM Giant, customers who provide us an e-mail address receive a thank you message with a satisfaction survey. Any scores less than completely satisfied generate a contact by a member of our management team. Those who do not provide an e-mail address receive the same survey in the mail. We constantly monitor our systems to make sure they are in alignment with our goal of complete customer satisfaction.

We have recently returned to team service. Each team has 4 to 7 technicians and work for one service advisor. Because we have three teams, it is like having three small service departments. This way you get the personal service of a small dealership with the parts and special tool availability of one of the nation’s largest dealerships.

It is our vision to be the best place on the planet to purchase a vehicle and to have a vehicle worked on. The JD Power survey is testimony to GM’s commitment to customer satisfaction. We take that to extremes at the GM Giant. Every one of our employees is paid on customer satisfaction. We know that customers don’t care how much you know about them until they know how much you care about them.

Drive Safely.