• by Karl Greenberg , August 11, 2009

General Motors is launching its own eBay Motors microsite for California consumers to shop Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac vehicles. The promotion is also the first from an automaker that takes consumers all the way from research to online purchase. The effort, at GM.eBay.com, launches Tuesday and stays live until September 8. The Detroit automaker says its 250 California dealers were asked to "opt-in" to participate in the program by August 4th; 225 of them are participating, and determine what prices to offer on new-vehicle inventory.

The program allows consumers to negotiate, compare prices between participating dealerships, and ask questions -- just like on a regular eBay site, but without the bidding. Like eBay, consumers have a "Buy It Now" option, as well as a "Best Offer" alternative where they can indicate the price they are willing to pay and negotiate online with the dealer for the vehicle.

Most dealerships already have dedicated Internet sales staff and generate sales from online leads, but General Motors spokesperson John McDonald says this program is different because it focuses entirely on new vehicles.

"For one thing, it's General Motors doing all-new cars, trucks and SUVs, and that's typically not what you see out there," he says. "Dealers on occasion will put new car stock out there; but this constitutes as many as 20,000 new GM vehicles in the state of California alone [that will be listed on GM's eBay site]."

EBay says it gets 12 million individual car shoppers per month; GM cites J.D. Power & Associates numbers from last year saying that 75% of new-vehicle buyers in 2008 used the Web during their shopping and research process versus 70% in 2007; and that last year saw the largest year-over-year increase in online automotive shopping since 2001.

McDonald says the GM.eBay.com Web site will serve as a portal leading to brand-specific sites Chevrolet.eBay.com, Pontiac.eBay.com, Buick.eBay.com and GMC.eBay.com.

McDonald says the effort will be supported in California with a full-out eBay/GM co-branded regional TV, print, radio and Internet campaign with the theme "Our best cars, your best offer."

He says the automaker chose California because it is the largest new-vehicle market in the U.S. and one of GM's weakest, on a per-capita basis. "That's a market we can do better in," he says. "We have 13.5% market share in California, and our national average is 19%. It's also an early-adopter state, and of course eBay is there." He says if the program proves to be a success, the company will roll it out nationwide.