INTRODUCTION
As noted in the Home Page and Dealer Closure messages on this website, I closed Signer Buick-Cadillac on November 30, 2009, as a result of GM’s elimination of 1,350 dealers when it filed bankruptcy in 2009. While GM’s “Wind Down Agreement” would allow me to remain open until October 31, 2010, with the ongoing depressed market losses it would make no sense to do so as it had become virtually impossible to make a profit as a Northern California GM dealer without a truck line. GM repeatedly denied me the GMC truck franchise for reasons described below, which I believe to be seriously misguided. Thus, GM’s elimination of my dealership only served to accelerate the inevitable in my case due to GM’s intentionally starving me of product. It is important to note that I did not fail financially; in fact, I remained in business for many years beyond the vast majority of non-truck GM dealers.
My story is an unbelievable one of General Motors’ aggressive long-term engineering of the demise of one of its most dedicated dealers. GM designed its strong efforts to induce my exit in 1997, and implemented them without success beginning in early 1998. In the mid-1990’s, GM simply decided it wanted to control selected local markets in the U. S., of which Fremont/Newark was one — I happened to be in the way. My observation is that once GM chooses a dealer as a target, he or she is branded for life. If GM ever allowed me to acquire Pontiac-GMC, it would constitute admission of earlier mistakes; an act that is seemingly not acceptable within the GM corporate culture. GM’s engineering of my demise continued with unconscionable methods of varying intensity for the rest of my career until GM’s 2009 bankruptcy and the support of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry allowed it to take away my franchises in order to give them to its hand-selected GM Minority Dealer Program operator. It is a case of legalized confiscation that one would not believe could happen in America
I have always performed well for GM, and in its intense efforts to induce my exit, it has never cited any reason why I should not be a GM dealer. The most tragic part of the story is that over the past 19 years GM’s plans for Fremont/Newark repeatedly either changed or failed, and beginning in late 2004 GM secretly decided to execute without me the exact Buick-Pontiac-GMC-Cadillac Fremont Auto Mall plan it denied me in 1991. GM’s 2004 decision led to what I believe was an unconscionable series of harassment acts intended to induce my exit, preferably before I learned of its Auto Mall plan. I wish to make it clear that my characterization of the acts as harassment and other observations I state herein are my opinions only, but are supported by what I believe to be strong evidence that is included on this web site.
GM’s misguided business decisions and malicious actions with me demonstrated a total lack of good faith in recent years, and thus violated the trust that, out of necessity inherent in a dealer/factory relationship, I have placed in it. This trust placed in GM includes its business decisions that affect me, as well as its providing my dealership a product portfolio to make a reasonable return on my investment of capital and years of dedicated long hours. As there have been literally dozens of GM and GMAC employees involved in the various actions against me over a period of nearly two decades, I feel that my experience clearly illustrates an arrogance deeply embedded in the GM corporate culture. As GM’s and GMAC’s actions with me appear to be representative of their ways of doing business, it can be safely assumed that they mark merely the tip of an ugly iceberg of evil actions in all aspects of the businesses. After reading what follows, I believe that any U. S. taxpayer/creditor will understand this culture that led GM into bankruptcy.
It is important to understand GM’s 1990’s product emphasis shift from cars to trucks, eventually making it virtually impossible to survive without Chevrolet or GMC except in a small handful of GM-friendly markets in the country. The San Francisco Bay Area is possibly the least GM-friendly, considerably worse even than the state average for non-truck brands. Primarily as a result of Buick’s reduced model count and blurred image (Excel file) (PDF file), my sales of the brand fell 97% from the 1984 peak (Excel file) (PDF file), while at the same time GMC sales thrived. It was quite apparent that GM had been engineering the demise of Buick, similar to what it had done with Oldsmobile and Pontiac. At the same time, GM was aggressively combining Buick with Pontiac and volume-dominant GMC at dealerships around the country. See Expanded Details: “Misc: GM Channel Plan & Engineered Demise of Buick” for additional information. GM’s repeatedly denying me Pontiac-GMC cost me millions of dollars in lost profit opportunity, and led to my ultimate demise as GM had planned since 1995 when it first attempted to induce me to trade my Buick franchise for the doomed Oldsmobile.
It should be noted that amid the long sales decline, there was no change in my dealership’s business practices. However, my market became even more challenging than other markets for Buick and Cadillac, as the GM-shunning Asian population in my Fremont market skyrocketed from 7% in 1980 to 50% in 2010. This Silicon Valley-induced influx of well-educated, high-income, luxury-import-buying immigrants is discussed in more detail in the 2004 time frame. Also, as sales declined over the years, thus providing little for me to offer sales consultants and managers, attracting and retaining top talent became increasingly difficult.
It is important for readers to understand that in my lifelong career as a General Motors dealer (including at my mother’s Oregon dealership,) my dealership was far more than a job to me – it was my life. As I have no family, my business was my family, my identity in the community, my primary source of self-esteem, and what I had thought would be my financial security. The multi-million dollar facility I built was, in part, an investment that would generate rent income even if I planned to retire one day. But not only did GM’s long-term actions with me constrict my income and squander my growth in the past, its ultimate destruction of my business destroyed the value of my relatively new facility as is described in the narrative. When I closed, there were three empty GM facilities on my block, and no franchises available to fill them. Of the few manufacturers not represented in Fremont-Newark, all of them wanted to locate in the Fremont Auto Mall as GM decided to do. GM’s action left Newark as a ghost town.
One of the worst aspects of all of the damage GM did to me was virtually forcing me to build a new facility in Newark, rather than support my move to the Fremont Auto Mall that I committed considerable time and money co-developing with nearly all other Fremont dealers between 1987 and 1992. As noted above, my investment would have grown as expected in the Auto Mall, but instead was destroyed by GM, the same company that forced me to Newark. Words cannot describe how GM’s actions have negatively affected my life both financially and emotionally, now leaving me with little to show for my career-long dedication.
As many of the facts I state are so bizarre as to possibly be unbelievable, through links I have included many supporting documents out of hundreds I possess. Many of the supporting documents include underlined or boxed-in text for areas of focus. Any opinions I state in the following are my own, but are based on what I believe to be solid evidence. As the complex story spans more than two decades and contains many “subplots,” having a printed copy of the History Timeline (Excel file) (PDF file) at hand might aid comprehension.
