Earlier this year General Motors, owner of Chevrolet, files for bankruptcy. However, they have sold off some of their companies and managed to turn themselves around, and now as of July this year, they have stopped receiving protection from the US government.
Now that they have sort of recovered, they are now attempting to build themselves back up again and bring in more sales to the company. The company are looking into a series of new methods to sell their vehicles. The first one is car leasing, which they had previously pulled out of this time last year. General Motors are currently planning to return to the contract hire market this month. General Motors, being the manufacturer, may be able to give some extremely cheap van leasing offers as they can undercut much of their competition because the cars come straight off the production line.
The other method is that they are teaming up with the online auction site eBay. As of August 11th, within the California area, General Motors started listing brand new Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontic cars onto the online auction site.
The system is being run on a trial basis up until the beginning of September, however, currently over 225 of the 250 Californian dealers for General Motors are signed up for the scheme. The system will allow customers to buy the cars for the listed price, or they can haggle with General Motors to get a better price. After the car has been purchased, the buyer must travel to one of the registered General Motor dealers to get their new car.
If eBay and General Motors find the system to work well, they will consider spanning it across the US. Also if other companies see the methods being successful, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw other manufacturers offering car leases such as a Mazda lease.