GM Ends eBay Pilot Program — But Hints at National Rollout in 2010

DETROIT — General Motors on Wednesday ended its ambitious six-week trial program to use the eBay auction site to sell new vehicles through 225 California dealerships. Now it says it is trying to figure out exactly how many vehicles were sold through the program and whether to roll out a similar program nationally in 2010.

The question of exactly how many vehicles were sold through the eBay program seems like a no-brainer. But GM spokesman John M. McDonald said in a Wednesday interview with Inside Line that the automaker is just now starting to sift through records to figure it all out.

"We now have to go through dealer sales inventory and records and match them to all the leads and verify that lead resulted in that vehicle sale," he said. "I don't know when we'll have that [number]. The $64,000 question is, How many vehicles did you sell on eBay?"

McDonald said the program may still have legs. "We may roll out something like this nationally in 2010 if eBay will work with us to do that. We say let's pause for a second and find the best way if we elect to roll this out nationally. It won't fit between now and the end of the year. It probably will fit next year in some form or fashion."

He added, "eBay has a customer base we want to get to and attract."

GM said it delivered more than 15,000 "quality leads" to those California dealerships and "had over 1.9 [million] inventory searches on the microsite."

The GM/eBay program was designed to attract finicky California buyers who tend to shun General Motors and other Detroit automakers. Using eBay's auto marketplace, shoppers in California were able to negotiate a price with a dealer or purchase the vehicle at a fixed price.

When GM kicked off the eBay program in August, it was touted as a grand experiment that "could prove to be a whole new model for how we sell our vehicles across the United States," said Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of vehicle sales and marketing. He made the comments on the corporate GM FastLane blog.

McDonald underscored on Wednesday that the GM/eBay experiment is "groundbreaking activity."

"This isn't [selling] BlackBerrys or cell phones or stereo equipment," he said. "People need to see the car and touch the car. It's similar to shopping for a house online. At some time you have to see the house and see if the bedroom will fit your furniture.

"The question is how do you better connect people online with the buying experience to make it convenient on their terms. It is expanding the dealership showroom and lot onto people's desktops and laptops."

Inside Line says: GM insists the eBay experiment is not dead, as it continues to crunch the numbers. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent