Stripping the dealerships:
I wondered when this was coming along. One of the hardest things for big Auto to deal with is all of theose contracts they made with dealerships that were becoming too hard to fulfill.
Dealers, employing more than 1.1 million salespeople, accountants and mechanics, are protected by state franchise laws. GM spent more than $1 billion to dissolve its Oldsmobile unit, partly on lawsuits over forced closures.
“In a number of states there’s these very elaborate procedures that you have to go through to shut dealerships,” University of Chicago law professor Douglas Baird said in an interview. “In some states you just can’t do it at all.”
They have to close at least a quarter of all dealerships… trying to talk them into it without buyoffs that they can’t afford is proving next to impossible. Collapsing car sales might do it, but GM needs this a whole lot more quickly…