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GM dealers unhappy about pickup prices

The backlash is beginning. Following General Motors' price hike of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra last week, dealers across the country are expressing their ire over increasing prices in the face of rebates and discounts on trucks from Ford and Ram.
Speaking to Automotive News, Sam Pilato, the general manager at Dimmitt Chevrolet in Clearwater, FL, Silverados are "selling very poorly." W. Carrol Smith, the president of Monument Chevrolet in the heart of truck country, Texas, said, "[GM's] position is that the vehicle stands on its own and it doesn't need a bigger rebate. That's not what the market is telling us."
According to AN, that's the general attitude amongst Chevy and GMC dealers across the country, where the twin pickups are getting butchered in sales by competitors offering up to $9,000 off their sticker prices. Part of the problem for GM is that its trucks are arriving on the market near the end of the current F-150's lifecycle, a fact that Ford has taken advantage of.

Watch GM's new pickup crash its way to five-star NHTSA ratings

General Motors has just scored a big win with its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, acing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration New Car Assessment Program. The two full-size trucks had already netted a five-star Overall Vehicle Score in their crew-cab variants, but the new testing certifies them as five-star trucks in both regular and double-cab bodystyles, so GM's trucks offer top ratings across the board.
"Our incredibly capable trucks have been engineered to be some of the safest," Gay Kent, GM's general director of Vehicle Safety and Crashworthiness said. "We've designed the vehicle structure, strategically placed high-strength steel and developed the occupant restraint system to achieve high levels of safety performance."
The scores mark the Silverado and Sierra as the first pickups to net five-star scores since NHTSA beefed up their testing regime in 2011, a nice feather in GM's cap as it continues to slug out the pickup truck wars with crosstown rivals Ford and Ram.

J.D. Power: Mini, Lexus again offer most satisfying sales experience

JD Power has released its annual Sales Satisfaction Index Study, and once again Mini and Lexus have taken top honors. Overall, buyers are more satisfied with the auto-buying sales experience than they were last year, with those surveyed reporting an average score of 664 points on a 1,000-point scale. That's up from 648 in 2011. Dealer satisfaction also increased by five points over last year as well.
All told, Lexus brought home an index score of 737, which was high enough to put it atop the luxury brands for the second year in a row. JD Power says Infiniti came in second in that category with a score of 728 and Cadillac rounded out the podium with it's rating of 725. Speaking of Infiniti, that brand saw the single largest jump in sales satisfaction of any brand on the survey, popping up 52 index points over 2011.
Among mass-market brands, Mini ranked highest with a score of 712, followed closely by Buick with 706 and GMC farther down the line with 683. You can check out the full press release below for more information.