Fort Wayne area GM dealers await word on their fate

Marty Schladen, The Journal Gazette

mschladen@jg.net

Area car dealers will spend the coming week anxiously checking their e-mail, voice mail and snail mail, trying to make sense of conflicting information they're hearing about their future.

General Motors Corp. is expected this week to start notifying some dealers they're underperforming and it's unlikely their contracts with the carmaker will be renewed when they expire in October 2010.

It's the first step as GM tries to cut its dealer network of 6,200 by 2,600 in the face of shrinking sales.