Taylor points out that Cadillac sells to dealers, not to customers; the success of any given dealership lies with the dealer.

Question: How is the dealership system changing

Taylor:    Well, it’s a… again, it’s a complicated system, this isn’t just General Motors, it is the US system, it’s franchise system and it’s very very, you know, significant and long term laws, [state laws in place] that guarantee the survival of franchise system.  And so, they are independent businessmen that, you know, run around stores and we are, literally, suppliers of their product.  We don’t sell cars to the customers, we sell them the dealerships as it’s all of it, all the manufacturers do it as well.  So, they’re really in charge of their own destiny.  We have all kinds of activities in place to support them, to send people there, to call them, to teach them, they run seminars, invite them to places and help them be as good a business people as they can but at the end of the day, you know, it’s up to them and like any business how well they run their business as leaders, as executives, as managers and some of them run huge conglomerates of hundreds of dealerships, others run, you know, one dealership and a lot of them, of course, family businesses so it’s a complicated formula for these guys and it comes down to maybe like sports, you know, we have outstanding dealerships that boils down a really good dealer and then we have average dealerships [IB] pretty much back to the dealer and the person and the leader, just like sports.