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Obama’s guarantee drives some car shoppers to react
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Greenwood Chevrolet salesman Lee Tartler, gives instructions to Linda Leger of Austintown after selling her and her husband a new car Tuesday.
By Don Shilling
AUSTINTOWN — About the same time President Barack Obama was telling the nation that General Motors’ restructuring plan wasn’t good enough, Linda Leger was calling her GM dealer.
Her daughter needed a car, so she asked a salesman Monday morning to pick out something that was easy to handle and had plenty of air bags.
“I didn’t give the economy a thought, other than my own economy,” Leger said Tuesday as she and her husband, Mark, picked up the new Chevrolet Equinox at Greenwood Chevrolet on Mahoning Avenue.
Another customer, Jean Judy, was thinking about the economy Tuesday, and it was motivating her to shop.
The U.S. is hurting, the 80-year-old Austintown woman said. People have lost large sums in the stock market, and others are without work as the recession lingers.
“I feel so bad for people who are losing their jobs and can’t pay their bills. I’m just trying to help out the economy,” she said.
And she’s helping out her grandson while she’s at it. His parents will buy her Saturn Vue for him if she bought another car.
She said she’s tempted to buy a Toyota because she had one for 13 years that she liked, but she stopped at Greenwood first and tested a Chevrolet Malibu.
“I think I should stick with an American car,” she said.
The future of the American automakers came into question when Obama rejected their restructuring plans Monday.
Judy and the Legers said, however, that their minds were eased when Obama said the government would back the warranties of GM and Chrysler if either company failed.
“GM offers a good warranty,” Mark Leger said. “We feel it will be here in some way, shape or form.”
Obama said he wants both GM and Chrysler to succeed, but they aren’t restructuring fast enough. He said the administration would give GM operating funds for 60 days so it can obtain more concessions from bondholders and the United Auto Workers and trim its brands and models. Chrysler received 30 days to find a merger partner.
If GM doesn’t meet its deadline, it may be forced to declare bankruptcy, Obama said. He added, however, that he expects GM would keep operating if it had to restructure under court supervision.
Linda Leger said it was scary to buy a car from a company that could go bankrupt, but her husband preferred to think confidently.
“I’m not very good at running scared,” he said.
His wife owns Western Reserve Mechanical, which has done plumbing and pipe installation work at the GM plant in Lordstown.
Mark Leger said, however, that it wasn’t the ties to the Lordstown plant that caused he and his wife to buy a Chevy. Their family and the business have been buying cars, trucks and vans from salesman Lee Tartler of Greenwood since the business was founded 20 years ago.
“Even our daughters know each other,” Linda Leger said.
That’s why she and her husband just called Tartler and trusted him to pick out the right model for their daughter.
In addition, Tartler just sold Linda Leger a Chevrolet Suburban in December. Her husband said their business is down some but work has been steady enough to keep 50 people on the payroll.
It’s obvious that not everyone in the area feels secure enough to buy two vehicles in three months.
Vehicle sales in the Mahoning Valley have been down significantly since the stock markets started crashing in October. The slowdown in vehicle sales has been getting worse, with drops of 45 percent in January and 43 percent in February.
Tartler said sales representatives have had plenty of time to stand around and wait for customers, but he’s not discouraged.
“We’ve been through this before. It’s never been this bad, but we’ve gotten through it before and we’ll get through it again,” he said.
shilling@vindy.com