re: #303 DistantThunder
FITZGERALD: Well, it’s a combination of things. It’s mostly management at Chrysler and GM. It’s poor. Ford — look at Ford. Ford is not letting any of their dealers go. They’re keeping all of them. They’re not trying to get rid of any. Their stock is going up. They’re out getting money from the stock market, from the private sector, because everybody knows that when Chrysler and GM are gone — and they’re going to go with the stupidity that they’re going through — whacking off the dealers? Does anybody ever do that?
And don’t tell me about Starbucks. Starbucks gave up — you know, they reduced their overhead by closing up their locations. We are no overhead to GM or Chrysler. They make a profit on us if we never sell a car. They make a profit if we never sell a car just on the fees we have to pay them.
VAN SUSTEREN: Do you have a message for the current CEOs of GM and Chrysler?
FITZGERALD: Do I have a message?
(LAUGHTER)
VAN SUSTEREN: Yes. Do you — would you like to tell them something?
FITZGERALD: Oh, I could tell them a lot. I got a whole stack of things I could tell them.
VAN SUSTEREN: What do you want to tell them?
FITZGERALD: I think you’re very misguided. I’d help you if I could, but you don’t listen to me. So I guess I can’t help you. But your big problem is you can’t count. We have 13,000 dealers and you want to knock off 3,600 of those. That means there’ll be more import locations than domestic locations. Now, you know, with two out of three cars on the road is a domestic car, and you’re not reaching out to those people? If you’re going to rise again, there’s only one way. You have to get some of those 150 million people driving your products to drive new ones. I don’t think you’re going to be very successful with Honda and Toyota customers, so you need to take care of that 150 million.
You need to give them more service, not less. You need to give them more attention, not less. You need to forget all about your corporate ads with your image and all that foolishness and reach out to those customers and say, Look, we’ve had a rough patch, but we’re here for you. We’re going to look out for you. We’re going to do everything we can to make your experience with the car you have good, and we got great stuff coming.