GM dealers in California to sell cars on eBay

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- More than 225 General Motors dealers in California will sell vehicles through the eBay online auction site in a four-week trial, the companies announced Monday.

Under the program, which begins Tuesday, consumers will be able to bargain with the dealers for Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Pontiac cars and trucks from model years 2008, 2009 and 2010. The program ends Sept. 8.

The new car shopping website, gm.ebay.com, will feature a "wide selection" of up to 20,000 new GM vehicles at "competitive prices," the companies said in a press release.

Customers will be able to buy cars outright at the advertised price using the Web site's "Buy It Now" option. Alternatively, customers can suggest a price under the "Best Offer" option, which may then be negotiated with the dealer.

"Together with eBay Motors, GM and our dealers are reinventing the car-buying experience for our California customers," said Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of U.S. sales, in a statement.

GM emerged from bankruptcy protection on July 10, concluding a 40-day stay in Chapter 11 with the sale of its key operations to a new company majority-owned by the U.S. Treasury. The company pledged to win back American consumers and taxpayers.

The automaker has sold certain new and certified-used GM models on eBay Motors in the past. But the scale of the new program marks a significant shift for the online auction house, which is traditionally focused on used cars and auto parts.

"Through this program, we are helping GM dealers to extend their physical showroom while at the same time delivering to our buyers the great deals and broad selection they expect from eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500)," said Rob Chesney, vice president of eBay Motors, in a statement.

As part of its restructuring, GM shut hundreds of under-performing dealerships across the country. But the new program has been hailed by at least one of GM's California dealers.

Ted Nicholas, president and chief executive of a Chevrolet dealership in Bakersfield, said in a statement that he is "very excited" to participate in the new program.

"We've found that serious shoppers want it to be easy, and have shifted from the traditional forms of researching and purchasing vehicles to getting it all done on the Internet," said Nicholas.

Truck market to start recovering in 2010 - Mercedes-Benz

The truck market continues to take a pummelling, even as early indications are that the global recession has started to bottom out.

Sales of extra heavy commercial vehicles were down 57% year-to-date at the end of July compared with 2008, with heavy commercial vehicles down 44,7%, and medium commercial vehicles 44,4%.

The bus market provides the only ray of hope in the commercial vehicle segment at the moment, at a 2% negative compared with 2008, this as government is equipping the public transport sector for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) commercial vehicles vicepresident Kobus van Zyl says truck sales typically lag passenger car sales by a few months.

As truck sales were still buoyant long after passenger car sales had entered the downturn, Van Zyl expects the truck market to now only pick up at the beginning of the next year, with passenger car sales already stabilising.

However, the extra-heavy commercial market is only expected to bottom out next year somewhere.

“Cars are down 29%. We would love that number right now,” says Van Zyl.

On a year-to-date basis, total truck sales are down from 21 884 units in 2008, to the current 11 398 units.

Van Zyl expects a South African truck market of 19 430 units this year.

This is a huge drop from last year's 34 664 units, and 2007’s record-breaking 37 069 units.

As recently as 2003, the truck market stood at an annual volume of 16 327 units.

Despite the doom and gloom, Van Zyl points out that the South African truck market is faring well compared with the rest of the world, with the segment down 60% in Western and Eastern Europe, for example.

Van Zyl says the local market is witnessing a lot of fleet replacement rather than expansion at the moment.

“Over the last few years companies build up their fleets to prepare for government's infrastructure spend, and now we see things starting to stabilise.”

Following much criticism from the trucking industry earlier this year that South Africa's traditional banks were shying away from providing credit to the automotive sector, Van Zyl believes the country's large banks have now started to return to the market.

“We are not where we were before the crisis, but the banks are definitely playing the market again. The banks are moving back. They understand the commercial vehicle market better now, and they are pricing the risk better,” he explains.

Around 45% of commercial vehicle deals within MBSA are funded in-house.

One aspect that has not improved is that the commercial vehicle parc is not providing service income to truck dealers as is the case with passenger vehicle dealers.

“Trucks are standing still, they are simply being parked, so workshop throughput has fallen dramatically,” notes Van Zyl.

He adds that MBSA's truck plant in East London, doing completely knockdown production, has been “severely affected” by the market downturn, but notes that no staff has been retrenched.

“To enable the plant to remain open we have spread out production volumes over the rest of the year. We have spend a lot of time and effort to build up expertise, and we do not want to lose this.”

Van Zyl notes that it was also important to retain staff in the light of the bus deal the company has clinched from the Gautrain rapid-rail link project, and the government supply contract it has secured for the World Cup.

Government earlier this year handed MBSA and MAN Truck & Bus the contracts to supply 570 buses to transport spectators, officials and players for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

MBSA will supply 168 semiluxury and 292 intercity buses, and MAN 110 general spectator buses.

Bombela, the company building the Gautrain rapid-rail link, and the company which will operate it for 15 years, has also signed a deal with MBSA for the supply of 125 buses which will service the project’s feeder and distribution routes.

source:http://www.engineeringnews.co.za

Gray Market Cars, a Cash for Clunkers Stumper

Even before Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood held a news conference Monday to explain the Car Allowance Rebate System (C.A.R.S.), also known as “cash for clunkers,” it was a busy weekend at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency’s hot line received around 45,000 calls from folks eager to learn more about the government’s program to create an economic stimulus for the troubled auto industry and encourage the move to more fuel-efficient cars.

“We’ve gotten thousands of thousands of questions regarding issues that Congress never dreamed of,” said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for N.H.T.S.A., when I called to find out if my 1985 Mercedes 230E would qualify. The car is gray market, meaning it was privately imported after being purchased outside of the United States and brought into compliance with Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

The eligibility of gray market cars is one of those issues that Congress did not plan for, but will certainly have to be addressed as more than a half million cars have been imported into the United States over the last 25 years. Bringing European cars to America was big business in the mid-1980s and again in 2001 and 2002.

Don’t let the brand name fool you. My Mercedes is hardly deluxe. It’s a manual transmission, four-door sedan with thin fabric seats and rubber mats for carpeting. Nevertheless, over the years it has been a reliable means of transportation. Three of my four children learned to drive in it, and with the car’s reputation for crashworthiness, I don’t worry when they are at the wheel. These days, my 17-year-old son Sam is driving the car and complaining about never having enough money to pay for gas.

I dismissed this as typical teenager griping until he spent a few weeks calculating the mileage he was getting — barely 12 miles a gallon. So we were primed to explore our options when the cash for clunkers program was announced.

After an hour on the user friendly Web site, I learned that to qualify for the rebate a car has to be rated at 18 miles a gallon or less on fueleconomy.gov, the Web site of the E.P.A. (and the source for determining eligibility in C.A.R.S., according to Mr. Tyson). But because my Mercedes 230E was not sold in the United States, the model is not listed.

“It’s a question of determining if there’s a comparable model being sold in the U.S. that can determine fuel economy,” Mr. Tyson said. “Our lawyers are going to have to make a decision.”

Gray market cars like mine aren’t the only vehicles falling through the cracks in the new program, Mr. Tyson told me, while admitting my particular question did have him stumped. The common industry practice of badge engineering is also causing problems, where one car is listed and a nearly identical car is not.

“If the question has stumped me, it’s going to stump the hot line too,” Mr. Tyson said. “It’s going to require an interpretation that we’re not equipped to make right now.”

Having once worked for lawyers, I did not find the idea that determining eligibility for my clunker might require a legal opinion to be welcome news, and I reminded Mr. Tyson that the program is designed to expire in November. But he hastened to reassure me and others in a similar situation.

“We look upon it as a challenge,” he said. “We’ve just created an entire program in 30 days. You don’t think we can answer a question quicker than that?”