What's Happening to Our Auto Dealers is Criminal - Continued

"What is the SBA" is where we left off yesterday. That was from a GM Regional Manager of Dealers. So she tells my friend the floor planning she set up she can't approve so she can't order her 2010 cars. Imagine how absurd this is?

So my friend is then referred to the 'head of finance for floor planning of all of GM' in Detroit. He talks with her and says he cannot approve it either since Eagle Bank (her local bank) and the SBA aren't on his approved list. Then after further discussion he says, "Well, what is the SBA anyway?" And these guys are guiding the 'turnaround'. He continued no order, not on approved list until she says the SBA is in fact your employer, the Federal Government. He was still undeterred until she raised heck and an auto contact she has went to DC and worked it out at the eleventh hour. Unbelievable what is going on.

I told her I used to think a lot of this mess was because of the naivete and lack of any experience of our fearless leader and his team. She said after what I have seen I think it is far more sinister. She then explained that a national auto dealers paper carried her story and she was loaded with calls inbound asking 'how did you do it?' or 'Aren't you afraid to take them on'. The worst calls came from two different dealers who had signed the 'new' agreement and GMAC had foreclosed on them, lock stock and barrel. One man in NY was in tears, they said he violated his payment terms and came in legally seized his dealership, took it and his house, cars, bank accounts, kids college funds and even a vacation house - left with nada, nothing, zilch.

And that's the new America. And my local dealer, well, she got free of GMAC, got approved and ordered I think 20 new 2010 vehicles first week in September, many she has buyers for and let me see, here it is nearly December ... she has received two, countem' of her order with no real date for the receipt of the rest. I think she said three were at a distribution point somewhere waiting on a truck. And the real kicker, these days she has to pay cash in advance with the order for the vehicle, GM has been using her money since early September with no delivery date and she is the one paying the floor plan interest all this time.

She is in a fight for her life but she's a fighter and we need more like her ... something is amiss in Washington as never before.