Valley favorite is still available at a dealership near you

Over three generations, there have been songs about red Cadillacs, as well as white, black, lavender, solid gold, and, of course, pink Cadillacs. But if General Motors had gotten its way, buyers could have colored the Cadillac gone in the Mahoning Valley.

As part of their bankruptcy reorganizations, General Motors and Chrysler attempted to eliminate 2,789 dealerships last year. The results were varied across the nation, and the Mahoning Valley, where the GM presence has been strong for almost as long as cars have been sold, fared better than most areas. Everyone lost or will lose their Saturn and Pontiac dealerships as those marques were discontinued. Chevrolet, Buick and GMC dealerships in this area escaped almost unscathed. But Cadillac took a hit.

This is almost inconceivable, but the Mahoning Valley was on the verge of having no Cadillac dealership, until Congress stepped it.

It’s possible that after everything shook out, General Motors would have would have re-established one Cadillac dealership in the Valley. But it appears that in an attempt to isolate the Cadillac from the rest of the GM line and give it an air of exclusivity similar to the Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, GM was willing to direct area Cadillac buyers to Akron or Cleveland — at least for a while.

Stretching a theory

We understand the theory of tantalizing prospective buyers as a marketing strategy. It

might make sense under certain circumstances. But it’s hard to see how the theory computed here, where GM had a loyal customer base for all its products, including Cadillac.

And it made no more sense to penalize area Cadillac dealers, some of whom had been selling GM products for generations.

GM and Chrysler used the opportunity of their bankruptcies to unilaterally scale back their dealership networks. The car companies had been inclined to do so, and they received encouragement from the Obama administration, which suggested that foreign makers were getting by with fewer dealerships, so the domestic companies should as well.

It’s still difficult to see how dealers, who operate as independent sales outlets for the car companies’ products, are a drag, but that was the story in Detroit and Washington, and at least some people were sticking to it. Members of Congress, it turns out, were not among those people.

Dealers appealed to Congress for help, arguing that they were important economic entities in their communities and that they deserved more consideration than they were getting from the administration and the companies.

Congress passed a bill in December requiring GM and Chrysler to enter arbitration with all of their dropped dealerships. In response, GM announced last week that it was restoring 661 franchises. It will go to arbitration on the others.

The three Cadillac dealerships in the Mahoning Valley, Stadium GM Superstore in Salem, Cole Valley Pontiac-Cadillac in Bazetta Township and Columbiana Buick-Cadillac-Chevrolet have been given new life.

Cadillac was founded in 1902 and is one of the oldest surviving automakers in the world. This area, with ties to Packard and Packard Electric that predate even Cadillac’s history, deserved better than to be abandoned.