We have been preparing for the closing of our Pontiac franchise for a few months now, and it has progressed in an orderly fashion. We no longer greet customers with "Welcome to Haley Pontiac GMC", rather we greet with the shortened "Welcome to Haley GMC".
Our uniforms are now imprinted with our Dealer Group Logo and the Pontiac Arrowhead is gone. Our inventory shrunk from 150 to 120 to 84 to 47 to 4 and finally to 1. The final Pontiac was a 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP, fittingly not only the last Pontiac in our inventory, but also, apparently, the last new 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP left in the entire country. (See Jalopnik article: http://jalopnik.com/5437577/quick-buy-the-last-new-pontiac-g8-gxp )
I guess because it was so gradual, and that our goal was to sell all of these units, the full emotional impact of not being a Pontiac Dealership anymore just didn't really register.
One of my co-workers recounted this story about selling Pontiacs... "I remember the first New Pontiac I ever sold when I started in the business back in 1986. It was a Pontiac Goolie. The customer came in to the dealership and wanted to buy a Pontiac Goolie." (it was actually a 6000LE) We all laughed.
The coworker was pretty emotional when he realized that this would be the last new Pontiac he would ever sell. 24 years IS a long time. I’ve only been selling Pontiacs for 12 years, and I have formed quite an attachment to them.
Pontiac has been good to our dealership and our dealership has been good to Pontiac. We were the Number 1 Pontiac Dealer in Virginia for 2008, and had won numerous volume and customer satisfaction awards. Dave Trebour was even presented with The Dealer of the Year Award, one of only a handful in the country. It still amazes me how many Pontiac G6s and other Pontiac models I see with “Haley” printed on them.
I think that in the long run, this will be our Pontiac legacy. We as a dealership, over the years, have been able to provide for the transportation needs of a community. We provided and serviced cars that took people to their jobs so that they could provide for their families, cars that brought “soon to be moms and dads” to the hospital for the birth of their children, cars that saw “first drivers”, cars that saw the happiness and the sadness of their owners, and so much more.
We continue serving our community as a proud GMC dealer, and we will continue to sell and service pre-owned Pontiacs as well as all other pre-owned makes and models, but the satisfaction of greeting customers with "Welcome to Haley Pontiac GMC" will be missed.
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