GM Reinstates 661 Culled Dealers

I don't see how that analogy works at all with two products so vastly different.

@50Merc If you're trying to imply that there is a direct relationship between number of dealers and total sales, history is not on your side. There are fewer dealers now than in 1949 - not just fewer per capita, which is also true, but fewer total dealers. Most of the attrition has not been recent - it's been ongoing since '49. The truth is that since '49 more and more cars are sold each year by fewer and fewer dealers. 1949 was the high water mark for number of dealers in the US (some sources say 1950). Ever since then, there have been fewer dealers, and this has been true even while the population has risen, and the number of cars per household has increased. There is simply no reality to the idea that more dealers are needed to drive sales. We've witnessed exactly the opposite - more sales from fewer dealers- for 60 years now.

You have a point about them dying off naturally vs being culled. But to put the cull in perspective, between GM and Chrysler there were roughly 2000 culled dealers. Since '49 several times that many dealers have dried up and blown away through "natural selection". The same period -1949 to now - has mostly been characterized by increasing car sales. The yearly charts would be up and down, but the long term trend line is higher sales. The explosion of car sales in the last half of the 20th century coincides with the loss of thousands of dealers over the same period. Thus, there is simply no relationship between number of dealers and total sales. In fact, record sales have been set by a smaller dealer network. When you say GM made products harder to get, you have to stop and consider the context. Sure, in a small town, an hour from a big city, the cars are harder to get. Yet people from other small towns where there is no dealer get cars, and realistically people keep a car several years, so a 30 mile trip isn't that great a hardship. It's one thing to drive 30 miles for a bottle of Coke, another thing to drive 30 miles for a car once every 7 years. In a different context, I still have 5 places within 10 miles to buy a Chevrolet. Do I really need that many choices? In reality, GM didn't kill enough dealers. Your other questions have been answered countless times here on TTAC.

Dynamic88, your last sentence urges me to say that IMO the discussion about the dealer cull is getting tedious on this site. CEO Ed Whitacre has stated publicly that he expects positive results for GM and as such GM employees and dealers will be held accountable to achieve those results. Just guessing here, but maybe Whitacre looked at this arbitration process and said, okay, if a dealer wants a shot at selling cars and trucks, have at it. If they don't succeed, they will close anyway.