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Cars and Drivers

24/7 Wall St. TV: GM’s Own “Clunkers” Program

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The “cash for clunkers” program was not kind to GM. It did not have a single vehicle on the list of the ten most purchased cars which was dominated by Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), and Ford (F). GM had 17.6% of the total new cars sold, behind Toyota’s 19.4%. The plan did not do much for GM’s August sales, which fell 20% from the same month last year.

GM has decided to launch its own gimmick to get new car buyers. It will offer customers a Satisfaction Guarantee which allows buyers to return their new GM vehicle to their dealer between 31 and 60 days of purchase and receive a refund of the purchase price for the car.  The vehicles have to be bought by November 1 to qualify.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au0jYLcE6FU&w=560&h=340&fmt=18]

GM has to confront the possibility that the Satisfaction Guarantee will help sales over the next six weeks but doom them for later in the year.

The Satisfaction Guarantee has a relatively good chance to ruin whatever turnaround has begun at GM. GM will have developed a reputation as a big car company with products that no one wants if the program fails. If it succeeds, GM may only be selling cars now that it would have sold anyway in two or three months.

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Executive Producer: Philip MacDonald

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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