RI car dealer cuts ties with GM
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By Jennifer DeWitt | Tuesday, March 18, 2008 |
After a half century as a General Motors dealer, Zimmerman Cars no longer will be an authorized Pontiac and Cadillac dealer, the company’s president announced Wednesday.
Mark Zimmerman, a second-generation owner, said the downtown Rock Island dealership is returning its GM franchise and instead will focus on its thriving Honda business.
“It was not a tough decision from a dollar-and-cents perspective, but it was from an emotional standpoint,” he said. “That GM/Pontiac sign has been there all the time I’ve been coming down here ... It will be hard to take that down.”
Zimmerman, who followed his father, Fred Zimmerman, into the business, said the change will be effective March 21. He announced the news to his employees Tuesday night.
In a letter sent to the dealership’s customers, Zimmerman said, “Realizing this has not been the best of times for General Motors, it is my belief that GM is making by far the best vehicles they have ever produced and that their future will be good.”
But he agrees with GM’s corporate policy of reducing the number of smaller dealers to improve operating costs. “In this day and age when a customer will drive 20 miles to buy a pair of jeans and with the reliability of today’s vehicles, we do not need as many same-brand dealers within an area the size of the Quad-Cities,” he wrote.
In an interview, he stressed that the decision was one he made independently and not something forced upon him by GM.
“They (GM) came up with a policy in the early 1990s — Project 2000 — to look at markets that had multiple dealers and see if they justify having as many dealers as they have.”
The policy was not a plan to close dealerships, he said, but rather a means of measuring how much each market could support. For example, the Quad-Cities has three GM dealers as well as dealers across the region in Geneseo, Ill., and in Muscatine and Clinton, Iowa. Des Moines — with a combined area population similar to that of the Quad-City region — has one GM dealer.
“Sometimes the pudding spreads a little thin when there are a lot of dealers,” he said.
Zimmerman said the dealership will focus on its Honda franchise, which “is growing rapidly and is continuing to grow.”
Zimmerman Cars, formerly known as Horst-Zimmerman, added Honda to its line-up in 1973, becoming one of the first Honda automobile dealers between Denver and Chicago.
While GM sales were strong, he said it is getting “harder and harder to control costs.”
All of Zimmerman’s 50 employees will remain on staff, although one management position will be eliminated.
Zimmerman Cars traces its roots to 1952 when Allen Horst and Fred Zimmerman founded a Plymouth and DeSoto dealership in Moline. The dealership later moved to downtown Davenport before settling in Rock Island in 1962. At the time, it was a Pontiac, Cadillac, GMC Truck and Rambler dealership.
The dealership, located at 1740 5th Ave., will continue to have a full range of used cars, trucks, vans and SUVs. In addition, its parts, service and body shop departments will continue to service a wide variety of customers. However, it will no longer be able to perform warranty work on GM models.
“Ending this long-term relationship with GM is very emotional, but the timing makes sense,” Zimmerman wrote in his letter. “We feel the long range picture will be good for the car industry and that our action will help us and our neighboring dealers to be in a better position in the future.”
Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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