maroman88
11-20-2008, 04:50 PM
well after Sifford closed last year, and the building burnt down last week, i saw this online today.... kinda sad
Cerami Pontiac falls victim to credit crisis, slowdown
Thursday, November 20, 2008
BY KEVIN G. DEMARRAIS
STAFF WRITER
As top executives of the U.S. auto industry plead for money from Congress to help them survive, the owner of a long-established Paramus auto dealership is calling it quits.
Fifty-two years after its founding, Cerami Pontiac is going out of business, the latest in a growing list of family-owned dealerships unable to survive in an increasingly difficult environment.
"We had a great run," said Sandy Cerami, 41, the grandson of the dealership's founder. "I'm proud of the things we did over 52 years. Getting out now is probably good timing."
The decision comes at a time when general economic slowdown, weakness across the General Motors brands and a tightening of the credit market, especially for auto leasing, combined to cut sales and revenues by 80 percent over the past year, Cerami said.
"Service, parts and the body shop carried us for the last two to three years," he said.
Cerami's problems are cascading through the industry, said Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers in Trenton.
Last year 5 percent to 7 percent of the state's 600 dealers shut their doors, with another 10 percent expected this year, Appleton said.
Among recent shutdowns were Mullane Ford in Bergenfield and Valley Ford in Westwood, which closed their doors in 2006, and Sifford Pontiac/GM in Bogota, which shut last year.
Several factors led to the big sales drop, including a "negative bias against General Motors, a negative perception in the public minds" concerning product quality, Cerami said.
"What has happened is, a younger crowd grew up with parents driving nothing but imports and hearing nothing but negatives about General Motors, Ford and Chrysler," he said. "A lot of it was well-founded in the '70s and '80s, and maybe into the '90s. But it is now an unfair bias compared to the facts. General Motors and Ford have really closed the gap."
Business has also been hurt by the tightening credit market — especially for leasing, which accounted for up to 80 percent of Cerami's business.
"General Motors basically stopped leasing vehicles," Cerami said.
With business falling sharply, Cerami was unable to meet terms of a lease agreement with the family partnership that owns the 5.72 acre site. "The value of the property "far exceeded the value of the business," he said.
The decision to close came last week, a day after negotiations to move the dealership to another location on Route 17 in Paramus fell through, Cerami said.
The 5.72 acre site has been sold to the Prestige Auto Group, which owns seven auto dealerships on Route 17 between Paramus and Mahwah, plus a Porsche dealership in Nanuet, N.Y.
Prestige has not said what it plans to do with the property.
Cerami's closing comes as Congress battles over a possible bailout for the auto industry.
By late Wednesday, Democratic leaders said an agreement during the lame-duck session of Congress seemed unlikely, even as the chief executive of GM told the House Financial Services Committee that collapse of the U.S. auto industry could lead to a loss of 3 million jobs within the first year.
Also on Wednesday, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, introduced an emergency tax proposal to make sales tax and interest payments on car loans tax-deductible from Nov. 12, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2009.
The deductions would be limited to cars priced below $49,500 and would be available only to individuals with income of less than $125,000 and families with a combined income under $250,000.
The Pascrell bill "deals with the true root cause of the problem: consumer confidence has collapsed and nobody is buying cars," Appleton said. It will get people buying cars again from dealers and dealers will start buying cars again from manufacturers and manufacturers will have cash to invest in building cars and retaining jobs.
"It all starts with restoring consumer confidence and giving consumers a reason to go out and buy," he said.
The proposed legislation is the latest effort to boost sales that were down by 23 percent or more at each of the major automakers last month.
General Motors reported a 45 percent drop from October 2007, while sales at Ford were off by 30 percent, Toyota by 23 percent, Honda by 25 percent, Nissan by 33 percent and Chrysler by 35 percent.
Adjusted for population growth, October was GM's worst month of the post-World War II era.
The Cerami dealership, which also sold GMC and Isuzu vehicles, was started by Santo "Sandy" Cerami in Ridgewood in 1956, and moved to its current location 12 years later.
But the dealership traces its roots to the 1930s, when the senior Cerami opened Gulf and Amoco stations in Hackensack. He expanded into auto sales in the 1940s and, after World War II he turned to selling cars full time under the name Cedar Motors, Hackensack.
Santo Cerami died seven years ago at age 88.
E-mail: demarrais@northjersey.com
Cerami Pontiac falls victim to credit crisis, slowdown
Thursday, November 20, 2008
BY KEVIN G. DEMARRAIS
STAFF WRITER
As top executives of the U.S. auto industry plead for money from Congress to help them survive, the owner of a long-established Paramus auto dealership is calling it quits.
Fifty-two years after its founding, Cerami Pontiac is going out of business, the latest in a growing list of family-owned dealerships unable to survive in an increasingly difficult environment.
"We had a great run," said Sandy Cerami, 41, the grandson of the dealership's founder. "I'm proud of the things we did over 52 years. Getting out now is probably good timing."
The decision comes at a time when general economic slowdown, weakness across the General Motors brands and a tightening of the credit market, especially for auto leasing, combined to cut sales and revenues by 80 percent over the past year, Cerami said.
"Service, parts and the body shop carried us for the last two to three years," he said.
Cerami's problems are cascading through the industry, said Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers in Trenton.
Last year 5 percent to 7 percent of the state's 600 dealers shut their doors, with another 10 percent expected this year, Appleton said.
Among recent shutdowns were Mullane Ford in Bergenfield and Valley Ford in Westwood, which closed their doors in 2006, and Sifford Pontiac/GM in Bogota, which shut last year.
Several factors led to the big sales drop, including a "negative bias against General Motors, a negative perception in the public minds" concerning product quality, Cerami said.
"What has happened is, a younger crowd grew up with parents driving nothing but imports and hearing nothing but negatives about General Motors, Ford and Chrysler," he said. "A lot of it was well-founded in the '70s and '80s, and maybe into the '90s. But it is now an unfair bias compared to the facts. General Motors and Ford have really closed the gap."
Business has also been hurt by the tightening credit market — especially for leasing, which accounted for up to 80 percent of Cerami's business.
"General Motors basically stopped leasing vehicles," Cerami said.
With business falling sharply, Cerami was unable to meet terms of a lease agreement with the family partnership that owns the 5.72 acre site. "The value of the property "far exceeded the value of the business," he said.
The decision to close came last week, a day after negotiations to move the dealership to another location on Route 17 in Paramus fell through, Cerami said.
The 5.72 acre site has been sold to the Prestige Auto Group, which owns seven auto dealerships on Route 17 between Paramus and Mahwah, plus a Porsche dealership in Nanuet, N.Y.
Prestige has not said what it plans to do with the property.
Cerami's closing comes as Congress battles over a possible bailout for the auto industry.
By late Wednesday, Democratic leaders said an agreement during the lame-duck session of Congress seemed unlikely, even as the chief executive of GM told the House Financial Services Committee that collapse of the U.S. auto industry could lead to a loss of 3 million jobs within the first year.
Also on Wednesday, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, introduced an emergency tax proposal to make sales tax and interest payments on car loans tax-deductible from Nov. 12, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2009.
The deductions would be limited to cars priced below $49,500 and would be available only to individuals with income of less than $125,000 and families with a combined income under $250,000.
The Pascrell bill "deals with the true root cause of the problem: consumer confidence has collapsed and nobody is buying cars," Appleton said. It will get people buying cars again from dealers and dealers will start buying cars again from manufacturers and manufacturers will have cash to invest in building cars and retaining jobs.
"It all starts with restoring consumer confidence and giving consumers a reason to go out and buy," he said.
The proposed legislation is the latest effort to boost sales that were down by 23 percent or more at each of the major automakers last month.
General Motors reported a 45 percent drop from October 2007, while sales at Ford were off by 30 percent, Toyota by 23 percent, Honda by 25 percent, Nissan by 33 percent and Chrysler by 35 percent.
Adjusted for population growth, October was GM's worst month of the post-World War II era.
The Cerami dealership, which also sold GMC and Isuzu vehicles, was started by Santo "Sandy" Cerami in Ridgewood in 1956, and moved to its current location 12 years later.
But the dealership traces its roots to the 1930s, when the senior Cerami opened Gulf and Amoco stations in Hackensack. He expanded into auto sales in the 1940s and, after World War II he turned to selling cars full time under the name Cedar Motors, Hackensack.
Santo Cerami died seven years ago at age 88.
E-mail: demarrais@northjersey.com