I’m kinda shocked: doesn’t every sales organization want to allocate space on their “shelves” for craptacular products? (via Tom Nelson)
(Automotive News) Some Chevrolet dealers are turning down Volts that General Motors wants to ship to them, a potential stumbling block as GM looks to accelerate sales of the plug-in hybrid.
For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said.
I wonder why
In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick’s Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM’s “turn-and-earn” system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels.
That’s less than 1 a month. Consider that Ford F Series pickup trucks sold over 584,000 in 2011, the number one seller across the country. The Volt sold less than 6,200 (which is still impressive for selling shit, though quite a few were purchased by government and fleets). Even the Leaf beat the Volt. Other sales figures, such as in the Auto News article, claim higher numbers (7,700), while others, such as in Wired story as of October, 2011, claim much lower (3,900). What is the actual figure? Does it matter? They are not particularly popular. In fact, the Wired article shows 723 sold in September 2011, versus 5,246 Suburbans sold, a comparably, and quite often higher, priced vehicle. And one that has quite a few more uses.
