It may take weeks or maybe even months before Tucsonans find out where they’ll be able to buy a 2010 model Buick and maybe some other brands of new General Motors cars. The market’s five dealers had until Friday (June 12) to respond to letters they received this month asking them to agree to either a new franchise agreement or to discontinue selling GM vehicles.

One thing for certain is Tucson’s only Buick dealer, Royal Buick, was among 1,350 dealers asked to “wind down” operations, which it will do, said Steve Lace, vice president of Royal Automotive Group.

But among the four remaining GM dealers in the market, none said it received a letter offering to add their Buick line-up.

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Representatives at Don Mackey Cadillac-Pontiac-GMC, O’Rielly Chevrolet and Quebebeaux Pontiac-GMC all said they received letters with offers to continue as GM dealers. An employee at Watson Chevrolet said they were told the same thing. All said the letters were confined to information regarding their existing line-ups of GM cars but, citing confidentiality clauses, none of the dealers wanted to talk on-the-record about the details of the letters.

GM has said it wants to reduce its network of about 6,300 dealerships by about 40 percent down to 3,600 dealerships.

Basically, there were three different letters that went out, said GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos, who would not say which dealers got which letters. Any announcements to be made were being left to dealers themselves.

Besides the letter asking some dealers to end their agreements, Garontakos said the other two were either an offer to continue with GM, which in some cases also included the possibility of changes to the dealer’s line-up of GM cars, or a letter asking a dealer to make some changes, such as fix up the appearance of the dealership, to be considered for continuation as a GM dealer.

Frank Sapone, general manager at Mackey, said he didn’t want to talk at all about the letters, except to say he felt comfortable Mackey would continue as a Cadillac dealer.  

One upset dealer noted that while GM officials were touting response rates at mid-week last week of 90 percent from dealers who were being asked to continue and 75 percent from those who were asked to wind down their operations, “they aren’t telling you what those responses are.”

“We still have a long way to go in this,” said another dealer. “A lot could change before we’re finished.”

Another dealer said he believed that even though four of the five dealers have been invited to continue their franchises, he wouldn’t be surprised if at least one more decides it doesn’t want to meet GM’s new requirements, though he insisted it wouldn’t be his dealership that drops out.

After 32 years at East Speedway and Columbus Boulevard, Royal Buick was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It received the notice despite that it has routinely hit sales marks as the second largest volume Buick dealer in the Western states and winning numerous awards over the years, including a sales and service excellence award for 2008 that had come just a week earlier.

In light of those Lace said he was surprised by GM’s decision but he said Royal was not going to challenge it as some other dealers have.

“It’s all part of the bankruptcy court orders,” Lace said. “We’re weren’t given any rationale. It’s not about sales or customer satisfaction.”

He said Royal would continue to operate the market’s only dealerships for Lexus, Jaguar, Land Rover and Suzuki. The company also operates one of Tucson’s two Kia dealerships. Yet to be decided is what will happen to Hummer, which GM is in the process of selling to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co, in China.

“We’ll take a look at what they have to offer after the sale goes through and decide whether we’ll continue as a Hummer dealer,” Lace said.

Otherwise, he said it was too soon to know what might happen to the space at 4333 E. Speedway now being used to sell Buicks. At the least Royal has until the end of the year to sell its existing inventory of 2009 Buicks and will remain a factory-authorized Buick service center until Oct. 31, 2010.  

While not commenting specifically on the Tucson situation, GM’s Garontakos said the company’s review considered consumers’ shopping patterns and the number and location of dealers when it reduces to just four brands — Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. In many cases, she said Chevrolet and Cadillac dealers would be able to stand along but Buick and GMC dealers would be combined.

In Royal’s case, the dealership at 4333 E. Speedway, is only about a mile away from Quebedeaux, at 3566 E. Speedway. With GM in the process of selling Hummer, Royal would have been left as a stand-alone Buick dealer. And with the Pontiac name being phased out, Quebedeaux would have been left with only GMC. Now, as the surviving GM dealer, Quebedeaux could wind up selling Buicks.

But owner Tom Quebedeaux said, “I don’t know that.”

In the meantime, though, with Royal Buick no longer taking new inventory, other dealers are wondering if there will be a new dealer in place to start selling 2010 Buicks.

GM’s Garontakos said there are no timetables.

Contact reporter David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.