Rick Snider hopes Merle Snider Motors in Winfield is one of approximately 660 dealerships nationwide that get offered a chance to continue their association with General Motors.
Snider ? general manager of Cowley County’s only GM dealership ? says he expects to find out this week if his company is one whose dealership might be reinstated. Snider was among 1,100 dealers who received letters last spring indicating their relationship with GM would end in Oct. 2010.
But a number of dealers were vocal in their displeasure with the automaker and many ? including Merle Snider Motors ? filed arbitration claims. To Rick Snider’s surprise, GM last week announced its decision to reinstate more than half of the dealership it planned to drop.
Snider says he knew some would be reinstated but had guessed the number would be around 100.
"I don’t know if I’ll get a letter, and if I do, I don’t know exactly what we’ll do," he says. "But I hope I get a letter, I really do. I’d like to at least have that decision to make."
But the decision won’t be a simple one, Snider says, for any of the dealerships that get a chance to continue on with GM.
For one thing, the nation’s largest automaker has reorganized and changed the rules for dealerships that want to carry the GM name. Snider expects he’ll be required to spend between $200,000 and $600,000 over the next three years to revamp and modernize his showroom and repair center on W. Ninth.
Snider says that while dealerships like his that were targeted to be cut got most of the attention last year, dealerships that were spared still had to make decisions about whether they could afford to satisfy GM’s demands.
"They got a letter, too, explaining what they needed to do to move forward with GM," Snider says. "It wasn’t nearly as cut and dried as everyone thinks.
He expects a number of the dealers that get reinstatement letters will be unable or unwilling to satisfy the automaker’s requirements for dealerships wanting to sell brand-new GM automobiles.
Merle Snider Motors had begun preparing for life without GM by adding a line of trailers to its lot and making plans to further diversify. Snider says he thinks the trailers would have to go if he continued on with GM.
"We’d already formed a game plan and were going to do the best with what we got," he says. "If we get a letter we’ll have to sit down and make a decision. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do."
Information from Associated Press news reports was used for this story.
