General Motors Jumpstarts AC Delco

AC Delco banner

There is one type of job you can’t export. The repair man.

Companies in recent years have ignored the repair man; before the Great Recession it was almost cheaper to buy a new lawn mower than to fix the old one. So you just threw the old one out, with a perfectly fixable Briggs & Stratton engine heading to the dump because it needed a $5 part and a 30 minute repair job. Those days are over, as repair is one area where consumers can continue to engage with their brands.

As the economy has tanked, consumers are not so flush. And so repair is coming back, at least in some areas, something offered in the story Bring Back Repair Shops, and in a recent post on Texaco’s forgotten Marfak brand.

Delco is a great brand, and still part of G.M. Delco derives from Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co., founded in Dayton, Ohio, by Charles Kettering and Edward A. Deeds in 1909.

In Sarasota, Swift Auto Repair shop hung out an AC Delco banner the other day. It was a sign that reps from AC Delco are getting aggressive about building market share for GM’s parts division. That there is an AC Delco sales rep who is making calls on individual shops, and hanging banners, is a sign of good brand management.

Good move, GM. Now for some national advertising to back it up.

A bit from the AC Delco site:

An aftermarket leader, ACDelco is committed to elevating the status of professional automotive service technicians. As vehicle complexity advances, there is an increasingly urgent need for well-trained and certified automotive technicians. ACDelco participates in many programs targeted at youth and designed to entice them into the automotive service profession and funds the educations of some promising automotive service professionals through scholarships.

Author

  • Garland Pollard

    J. Garland Pollard IV is editor/publisher of BrandlandUSA. Since 2006, the website BrandlandUSA.com has chronicled the history and business of America’s great brands.

1 Comment

  1. GM — last I knew — but this brand up for sale. They also canned their Goodwrench repair brand.

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