“I BET WHEN YOU BUY THIS CAR YOU GET FREE MAINTENANCE…LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, THOUGH”

6/7/13

GM will now offer two years or 24,000 miles of free maintenance on its Chevys, Buicks, and GMCs.  Caddy already offers four years or (I think) 50,000 miles of free maintenance.

This sounds like a great offer until one thinks about it for more than a few seconds.  How much maintenance does a car require in its first two years?   A few oil changes and tire rotations, at a total cost of at the very most a couple hundred bucks at retail.   And it’s amazing how much less maintenance a car requires when the company is paying for it than it does when the customer is paying for it.

GM suffers from a mediocre product line.  Other than Cadillac, which has some terrific products and is selling cars like crazy of late (in May, Caddy sales were up 40% from May, 2012), albeit with some pretty heavy incentives on its top selling CTS, the whole GM product line is something of a yawner.   Consequently, overall sales are stagnating and GM has to do something.   Maybe free maintenance will help sell some cars, as it has at Toyota, which has a similar bland product line but has the type of consumer loyalty on which GM cannot count.   Further, unlike throwing money on the hood, free maintenance might induce consumers to better maintain their cars, though, as I indicated in the last paragraph, “required” maintenance seems to fall off when such maintenance is on the company.

But even if the free maintenance gimmick does help sell cars, it is very much a gimmick.  that reflects a rather cynical view of the savvy of the U.S. car shopper.  And one thing that Americans still do better than anybody else is shop.