Local dealers appear to make the cut

By late Friday afternoon, it appeared three local General Motors dealers have dodged the bullet that took out 1,124 of their colleagues nationwide.

If no news is good news, then Don K Chevrolet, Scarff Buick Pontiac GMC, and Eisinger Motors are apparently staying in business.

General Motors sent FedEx letters to those 1,124 dealerships on Friday, letting them know their GM franchise agreements probably would not be extended beyond their October 2010 expiration. The axed dealerships have until the end of the month to appeal.

"I wasn't really worried because I knew we met the criterion," Don Kaltschmidt said from his Whitefish office.

"But still you really are worried because you don't really know You're still a little nervous even though you meet the criterion. The way I understand it, if you had a score of 60 or below - and our score is 102," a dealership agreement was put on termination notice, he said.

But some of his friends in other dealerships elsewhere did get the letter on Friday, and Kaltschmidt said they are good dealers who should have been given a chance to ride out the economic storm.

"There are extenuating circumstances," Kaltschmidt said. "I don't like the way they [GM] did it."

General Motors referenced its criteria for successful dealers in the letter sent to those targeted:

"(W)e have identified those attributes that GM dealers must have to be a successful part of the dealer network going forward," the letter stated. "We also reviewed historical performance factors such as sales effectiveness, sales volume [Kaltschmidt said 50 cars a year was the cut-off], CSI performance [customer satisfaction index], capitalization, profitability, location, [and] facilities … among other market factors."

The letter also gives some wiggle room.

"Please understand that our planning in this regard is not finalized," it continued, "and we are prepared to give you until the end of the month to submit any information you would like to us."

On Friday morning, Doug Scarff was watching for the arrival of the FedEx truck at his Kalispell dealership - just in case.

Scarff talked of Chrysler's move a day earlier in which 798 dealerships out of something around 3,000 nationally were told they are off the team. It's a different situation, he said, because Chrysler is in forced bankruptcy while GM is offering up a restructuring plan to the Securities and Exchange Commission. But local effects are similar.

"I would think it would be logical to close dealers in rural areas, but not a single (Chrysler dealership) on the Hi-Line got closed," Scarff said, puzzling through the decision. "The GM cuts will be a lot more widespread."

Scarff pledged to alert the Daily Inter Lake if a GM letter arrived Friday. But a late afternoon re-check found that he had left for the day without delivering any news to the staff or to the newspaper, indicating that a notice had not come.

At Eisinger Motors, a Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership, owner Greg Eisinger was out of the office until next week. His son Ben, who heads Eisinger Honda, was unable to return calls asking for comment regarding the GM notifications.

Kaltschmidt, however, said he was confident Eisinger would not have received one of the letters on Friday.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com