Is the Camaro coming too late?
 

Bill Heard Chevy one of the biggest and oldest Chevy dealers in the nation is closing all of its 13 dealership nationwide.

Is the Camaro to little to late for Chevy?
:iono:

Better late than not finished. This may be one of the cars GM needs to get back on it's feet, IMHO.

Lattof Chevrolet of Crateenginedepot.com fame is closing aswell.

i dont think its too late. dealers doing bad doesnt mean GM is doing bad.

+1, but I wish we could have been quicker to turn things around. Alot of people might still have jobs.:(

The coupe? No. The convertible? Yes!

GM has run off good salesman and givin the ones left little to work with in the past. Now we have to convince people not to believe the mindset that foreign cars are of some higher quality and that GM is coming back.

The quality of the camaro needs to be top notch in order to get rid of this stigma that foreign cars offer more quality than American. It is one of those stigma's that can be slowed and reversed given time and higher quality models.

There has been discussion that there are too many dealerships...What ever they may be, Buick, Pontiac, Chevy, GMC....go 10 miles find another. Sometimes one gets bought out, and what seems to be relocated to another more strategic area.....but in the end, turns out NOT to be strategic or beneficial at all, and then they pull the plug.

Yeah I just posted in another thread that the Bill Heard out here in Vegas shut down. Vista Chevy shut down as well out here. I was planning on buying my Camaro from Vista too.

We have to keep in mind that this car will be sold all over the world, not just North America. Just because we are in a recession, does not mean that the car will sell like hot cakes in Europe, Australia or even China.

And like Scott keeps saying, look at how well the 1979 Camaros sold when we were facing a worse downturn in the economy than we are today.

:word: There are 7 dealerships in my area (Houston). However, I had kinda been planning on buying from Bill Heard, they seemed pretty good and they told me the sold the most Camaros in Texas in '02 so that sounded promising. O well there is another one I kinda like that is closer.

What caught me odd is they are one of the oldest dealerships in the nation, started 11 years after Ford's model T was started.

Heard is not closing cuase of the economy, they were doing some big no no's.

I can go 20 miles in any direction from the apron of my driveway and visit no fewer than THREE Chevrolet dealers. I don't know if it's just the Cleveland area, but we are abosolutely saturated with Chevy dealers, and I don't think there is the need for it.

Yes, it's great for price shopping and competition from a consumer standpoint, but there comes a point at which it can bite GM in the butt.

Fewer dealers in vicinity = the higher price you will have to pay for your car = more profit for GM.

I mean, if GM is fine with the 6500 dealers they have across the country, fine. But Toyota is kicking their butt right now with just over half the dealer network size.

I think those dealers who do not adapt to todays global automobile market will ultimately find their demise. One of the Chevy dealers close to me is an old one, like 60+ years, and they are a very small neighborhood size - with wood panneling on the walls an a 1970's era vending machine right in the middle of the showroom. All you need are for the salesmen to come out with plaid suits and ultra wide ties with sideburns and a gold chain, and the Bee Gees on the stereo. Its rediculous.

On the other hand, the dealer almost across the street from me is large, clean, modern, and bright. It confounds me that both of these dealers can be selling the same exact product.

It's actually amazing that GM does not have a department that oversees these things. I know all the franchise laws, but there still has to be a standard operating procedure for all GM dealers.