In a week when Fiat-Chrysler announced its Chrysler brand (pronounce: Lan-Cee-Ya) would quit the UK market and General Motors announced it would stop selling Opel and Chevrolet vehicles in Russia, GM also issued a press release stating management has decided to withdraw sales of its cars and SUVs to customers who want to drive it on North American highways, in order to make up for continued losses of its European operations.
In a statement, General Motors explains that withdrawing their vehicles from the US highways will avoid any supervision by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and therefore save the company an estimated US$4 billion in recall-related costs. It would also alleviate dealers from having to repair over 30 million allegedly defective cars and trucks annually and as a side effect will have a comforting effect on consumers, who will no longer be frightened by never-ending media reports (un)covering potential safety hazards on their vehicle.
CEO Mary Barra: “This really is a prime example of the post-bankruptcy New GM, which no longer tolerates bad news about our company or our products. This latest decision is part of a broader marketing strategy which also includes forbidding buyers of a General Motors car or truck to take part in any third-party Customer Satisfaction Survey.”
Interviewed dealers showed mixed responses, with one dealer telling your Left-Lane.com reporter he thinks GM has waited too long to come up with a satisfactory solution to the recalls, but now shows it has the balls to do what’s right for its shareholders, while another dealer claims it’ll cost him a fat profit. “The customers who came in with their recalled vehicle? Man, they were sitting ducks. I’d give them the option to keep driving their current car with potentially lethal defects until we had time to fix it sometime in the next couple of months, or to trade it in for a brand new car that’s already been recalled and fixed before leaving the showroom. They’d happily accept any lowball offer on their trade-in.”
In a similar press conference, BMW announced it would pull out of the Large Slow-selling-because-hideous-hatchback Segment with the 5-series GT because Mercedes-Benz refuses to bluntly copy them like they did with the GLE Coupe vs. the X6.
Disclosure: This post is 100% sarcastic and in no way based on actual facts.
