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SAN FRANCISCO – General Motors haw add dealers in bounteous metro areas on the U.S. coasts because it expects income there to grow, digit top executives said Saturday.

It's the oppositeness of the company's attitude meet digit eld past when GM got disembarrass of most 1,700 dealers across the U.S. as it headed into insolvency protection.

GM has been losing dealers on the coasts, especially in California, for digit decades cod to slow income as grouping bought more external brands. Company officials say GM's slummy products also played a momentous role.

Mark Reuss, GM's North American president, said Sat that the company's dealership print on the coasts was blasted by the lack of products, the business overheating and GM's 2009 trip ended insolvency protection.

The company, he said, wants to rebuild the network because its newer models, same the Chevrolet Cruze compact, are starting to delude better in inshore markets, and GM expects ontogeny to continue as it rolls discover more newborn products and the economy recovers.

"We undergo there's areas where we should be that we're not," said Don Johnson, evilness chair of U.S. sales. "We didn't hit the product. We didn't hit the focus. We were irrelevant to Calif. consumers."

GM needs more dealers in the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas and module look at another areas on the East and West coasts and around the Gulf of Mexico, the executives said. They gave no timetable for the changes and said they could advise dealerships from downcast areas or add newborn franchises.

GM has exclusive 227 dealerships in California, most the same sort it has in Michigan, which has inferior than one-fourth as whatever residents.

The coasts hit daylong been a thickened delude for Detroit automakers and strongholds for Japan's Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.

Last year, income of General Motors Co.'s quaternary brands, Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC, chromatic 31 proportionality in Calif. to 138,735. But that's ease most half the sort of cars and trucks that the Toyota, Scion and Lexus brands oversubscribed in the state, according to the Calif. New Car Dealers Association.

Japanese automakers dominated most half the mart in Calif. terminal year, patch GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC compounded had 30 percent.

GM and its Detroit competitors are farther stronger in the nation's mid-section. Nationwide, GM had 21.8 proportionality of the mart terminal month, patch Toyota had 14.1 percent, according to Autodata Corp.

Reuss and Johnson, speech to reporters at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention in San Francisco, would not give a time inclose for adding or moving dealerships. They said the consort has to be prepared for ontogeny and it is focusing a lot of marketing on California.

"It takes time," Reuss said. "We're not there. It's meet whatever of it's beginning to take hold."

GM revilement its dealership ranks from 6,150 before insolvency to meet low 4,500 today. With inferior dealers distribution sales, the ones who are mitt are farther more profitable, Reuss said. Ninety proportionality of GM's dealers today attain money compared with inferior than 40 proportionality at the end of 2009, he said.

The executives also said GM module expand engage deals for buyers with slummy credit. GM Financial Co., the company's recently acquired finance operation, meet ended a successful experiment with engage deals in Ohio for buyers with assign scores of 620 or below. The deals, on the Cruze compact, module today distribute to another states.

The executives conceded that GM Financial is competing on subprime deals with Ally Financial, GM's possess former finance arm, which was bailed discover by taxpayers and is ease 74 proportionality owned by the federal government.

Ally terminal hebdomad picked quaternary investment banks to handle an initial public have offering, grouping old with the plans said.

They crosspiece on information of anonymity because they were not commissioned to handle the plans in public.

The Treasury Department hopes to intend backwards at small whatever of the taxpayers' $17.2 billion in bailout money ended the have sale. It's the stylish endeavor by the polity to recoup taxpayer money spent rescuing companies in the business facet and machine business during the scheme downturn.

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