Vauxhall Motors’ parent company, General Motors of America, is to sell its new cars on eBay. The motor manufacturer has struck a deal with the online auction giant to pilot a scheme in California to test the water to see if this is a viable scheme to compensate for its falling sales. Some 225 of the 250 dealers General Motors has in California have signed up to the deal.
GM’s marques include Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac, and more than 20,000 new vehicles will initially be listed on the joint website gm.ebay.com. The pilot scheme will last until the 8th September, at which time GM will assess the success of the venture and decide if it is worthwhile to expand the activity. eBay already has an existing arrangement with GM, which was initiated in February 2008, to sell its certified used cars on the auction website.
The website allows customers to compare pricing across models and participating dealerships, negotiate prices and arrange finance and payment. As with other eBay items customers can pay the “Buy it Now” price or make an offer and haggle.
A spokesman for Staveley Head, one of the UK’s leading motor trade insurance providers, said “Used vehicles have been available on eBay for many years but I’ve never heard of a motor manufacturer selling new vehicles on an online auction website before. It’s innovative and deserves to work. Traditionally customers have wanted to walk around a showroom and inspect what they are buying, but these days people are becoming more and more accustomed to buying just about every kind of goods and service on line. Many of our own clients in the UK are already making the biggest proportion of their vehicle sales online.”
General Motors came out of bankruptcy restructuring little more than a month ago and is in the process of reducing the number of its dealerships by 40% to 3,600 by the end of 2010 in an effort to return to profitability.
The state of California is the single largest market for new vehicles in the USA, although sales have dipped drastically in the last quarter due to the severity of the housing market slump there. GM’s market share in California is currently in the region of 13%, low when compared to its national average of 19.5%
Staveley Head is one of the country’s leading motor trade insurance brokers and will give you all the advice and assistance you need regarding this matter, including a very cheap motor trade insurance quote, if you log onto their website at www.staveleyhead.co.uk.
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