General Motors Feels the Burn: Looks to Sell ACDelco

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

We’ve just received a press release from GM announcing that it’s “exploring a potential sale” of aftermarket parts maker ACDelco. Apparently, “a sale is expected to promote more rapid growth of ACDelco globally.” The move is painted as a logical outgrowth of “a number of initiatives to bolster [GM’s] liquidity position by approximately $15 billion through year-end 2009, including the sale of assets which are expected to generate approximately $2-4 billion of liquidity.” In other words, we told you we were throwing furniture on the fire, and there you go. Equally unsurprising, GM hasn’t revealed the amount of money it wants for ACDelco. And GM is, once again, paying Merrill Lynch to do the dirty work. You may remember that Merrill arranged GM’s billion dollar payoff to FIAT for NOT buying the Italian automaker, and then bought GM’s abandoned shares for pennies on the dollar. If not, you should.

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • Mike Stevens Mike Stevens on Oct 22, 2008

    Let's not forget that AC Delco is not a "parts maker", it is simply a brand of service parts that are sold by GM dealers. Just like a brand new Chevrolet is assembled out of thousands of component parts that are purchased from GM's suppliers, so too are all of the AC Delco replacement parts that you find on the dealer shelves. Even in cases like oil filters, air filters, spark plugs, etc where the AC brand appears on the product or the product packaging, rest assured that somebody else made it, branded it to AC, and sold it to them. Sometimes Delphi is the supplier, but often times it is somebody else. All of the plants that used to make real, genuine AC parts have long since been sold, vacated, etc. Outsourcing is rampant in the US auto industry these days. Really, the only thing the OEMs don't buy from somebody else are the body stampings, and the major castings (like the engine block and head).

  • John Horner John Horner on Oct 22, 2008

    "My ‘97 Camaro came new with a Delco battery that lasted 7 years (in Pennsylvania!)" In 1997 AC-Delco still manufactured batteries, and they were generally of very good to excellent quality. Sometime around the time of the Delphi pseudo-spin-off the battery plant was sold. I forget precisely when, but it was post 1997. The point is: An AC-Delco battery purchased today has absolutely nothing in common with that one from 1997 except the name. Companies count on positive brand name associations persisting even when the underlying product is radically changed. Today, an AC-Delco battery label is just that, a label slapped onto whatever GM got the best wholesale deal on. The funny thing is, for years unscrupulous bogus parts makers put counterfeit parts into boxes which looked like AC-Delco boxes and sold them to unsuspecting buyers. AC-Delco's lawyers kept busy trying to track down and shut down these evil doers. Today, the mother ship is doing almost the same thing :(. In the next step it looks like GM may simply sell the branding rights to one of those former enemies. Check out this post over at turbobuicks for a look inside a "real" and "counterfeit" Delco oil filter: http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/1905794-post52.html

  • Asdfghjkl Asdfghjkl on Oct 22, 2008

    I bought a new 1995 Buick Riviera years ago and got got rid of it last year. I never saw the battery because it never failed and was located under the rear seat of the car. I never heard of anyone else having a battery last that long. Imagine a battery lasting that long and still going strong at the time I sold the car?

  • Gmfleecing Gmfleecing on Oct 18, 2009

    Factory installed underseat AC Delco batteries leak acid from the positive terminal because when they tightened the 10mm bolt down it pulls the casing apart around the positive terminal. Actual separation on the battery case in a circle around the whole positive mount. Acid leaks around it and down onto the terminal contact bolt corroding it where it was under pressure against an internal flat contact. GM owned AC Delco doesn't care about your concerns or mine enough to do anything about this even by e-mail, nor do the automotive dealerships care about it. They want your repair dollars at any cost. Latest move by their Cadillac dealership in my area is to limit the AC Delco 7 yr. warrantee to 50 months and prorate any additional time up to 7 years on the $170 AC Delco replacement battery I bought for the one that leaked the other day in my 2002 Cadillac with 45,000 miles on it. Both GM and its battery division will ultimately sink down to the bottom where they belong. They can only gouge us with their tactics if we let them.

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