A Minneapolis Business Journal Reporter called me the other day to tell me Twins catcher Joe Mauer had just bought the land on which Denny Hecker’s Southview Chevrolet (now closed) sits. Once his story printed, Mauer’s brother Bill called the reporter to say he had bought the land, not his brother Joe.

The source for the story was the Mauers’ grandfather who claimed Joe was setting Bill (who had been a sales manager at Southview) up with the dealership. Bill declined to say how he paid for the land.

To read story, click: Joe Mauer buys auto lot formerly run by Hecker.

Bill (or Joe) Mauer reportedly is trying to get the rights to the GM franchise, but the auto maker is blocking the plate, so to speak, in true Mauer fashion. For the record, Joe Mauer grew up in the Minneapolis region and is the best catcher in Major League Baseball today, and potentially will be the best catcher in the history of the game once he retires. In other words, he’s a Minneapolis icon.

A couple of years ago, this would have been a no-brainer for GM. But now, the world is much different. Unfortunately for Mauer, this is one hit he likely won’t get.

GM is in the process of eliminating about 1,300 dealerships (not counting Saturn, Saab and Hummer). Anyone getting a GM franchise today is going to have to have a proven track record of running a dealership.

For Bill, being a sales manager in the Southview dealership actually could be a strike against him. It was part of Denny Hecker’s empire which suffered a specatular collapse late last year. In fact, a grand jury right now is deliberating whether to bring charges against Hecker. He allegedly has defaulted on approximately more than a billion dollars in loans along with having a DUI in the last 12 months.

In other words, working for Hecker is not something to put on the resume when trying to get a dealership.

Another issue is that athletes in recent years have a had a poor track record owning dealerships. Several years ago, Mel Farr, a former Detroit Lion and Ford favorite, watched his automotive empire collapse. He targeted the subprime market, a tough one to succeed in.

In February, former Houston Oilers defensive lineman Ray Childress shut down his 40-acre auto mall in Texas while New Orleans Saints running back Deuce McAllister closed his Jackson, MS, Nissan dealership in March after filing bankruptcy.

Michael Jordan’s Lincoln Mercury store in North Carolina also closed earlier this year although, his Nissan dealership still is going strong.

One group of athletes that have done well in the auto business are race car drivers. Roger Penske has the second largest dealer group in the world while Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports, owns more than 60 dealerships across the country. There are several others.

For now, it looks like Mauer will end up owning an expensive used-car lot.

William “Skipper” Beck died Friday, September 11, when his Cirrus SR22 crashed at the Rock Hill/York County Airport in North Carolina. Beck was the only one on board.

The plane apparently had engine trouble at takeoff, prompting Beck to return to the airport when the plane went down.

Beck, 49, was a longtime car dealer whose Beck Automotive Group appeared on the Ward’s Megadealer 100 ranking for several years as one of the top dealer groups in the country. Beck ran the group with his younger brother, Bobby, but in recent years had been selling the group’s stores.

Beck sold his Charlotte-based Mercedes store, Beck Imports, this spring to the Hendrick Automotive Group (Sonic Races to Avoid Bankruptcy.)

Last year, the Becks sold Prestige Ford in Garland, TX, one of the country’s top dealerships, to Randall Reed.

Beck held a 5% ownership in the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats and was instrumental in bringing the basketball team to Charlotte. Beck was known around Charlotte for his philanthropy, but was in the process of moving beyond a difficult legal situation arising from soliciting a prostitute involved in the high-priced Hush Hush call girl ring.

A recent story in one of the consumer magazines asked whether the industry still needs dealers. It argued auto makers could sell cars just fine using the Internet. Haven’t we been down this path before?

Prevalent throughout the article was the premise that dealers are why cars aren’t selling. Specifically, the reason for the decline in sales is because customers are frustrated with the car-buying process.

It’s been a common theme recently. Sales are down so it must mean dealers are bad. Auto makers also have fed that line of thinking by eliminating “poor performing” dealers while implying they need to fix their retail networks.

Even vendors and consultants who sell to dealers are getting caught up in the hype of “blame the dealer.” Just visit one of the automotive conferences and you’ll hear how dealers need to fix their businesses.

The dealer is why we’re only going to hit 10 million sales this year? Nothing could be further from the truth. The banks are at fault, not the dealer. The reason cars aren’t selling is because of the continuing unavailability of credit. The industry was fine until the credit markets collapsed last year.

Dealers have to work harder to get deals financed. Banks say they have loosened the tough credit guidelines. That may be true, but they still are financing far fewer non-and subprime deals. Add to that, the average credit score on new-vehicle purchases continues to climb, according to Experian Automotive.

Dealers are keeping the industry afloat but it’s going to take the banks to bring to the industry back to levels much less painful then they are today. I’m not saying the banks are evil. The fact is, they are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. They got hammered for making bad loans when lending money to people who were high credit risks. And now, we’re hammering them for not continuing that practice.

However, the banks need to loosen up a bit, dealers tell me. Credit unions are trying to fill the gap, but there is only so much they can do because their portfolios and resources are far more limited than what large banks have.

Are there areas in which dealers can improve? Absolutely. The future represents a great opportunity for the 18,000 dealers that will still be in business next year.

Now is the time to “seize the moment,” to get the right staff and the right processes in place for when traffic returns. I have conversations daily with dealers who are doing just that.

In the next couple of weeks, the Cash-for-Clunkers program will be in full force. It’s going to drive a lot of traffic to dealerships who already are marketing themselves as Cash for Clunkers businesses.

If you’re not already getting your dealership ready — marketing, sales people, service advisors — get started today, otherwise you risk being marginalized in your market.

Dealers already are ramping up designing marketing and incentive programs to capitalize on the program the next few months. Dealers are going to be the ones who make the program work.

So hang on. The rest of the year could be exciting.

Today, 789 Chrysler dealerships will cease to operate unless the judge in the auto maker’s bankruptcy case does the unexpected and rules in favor of more than 300 dealers who objected to Chrysler’s dealer strategy.

The judge, Arthur Gonzalez, says he will issue an opinion today on the objections, but statements he made last week indicate he’ll likely rule in favor of Chrysler.

Last week, Chrysler President Jim Press along with General Motors President Fritz Henderson testified before a U.S. Senate committee defending their elimination of more than 3,000 dealerships combined.

Press claimed a bloated dealer network costs the company money. Although he mentioned at least three areas in which dealers cost an auto maker money, dealers argue the costs are passed down to them and that they pay for everything.

The need for a streamlined dealer network makes sense when you realize Chrysler is going from building 2 million vehicles a year to about 700,000 and from 38 models to about 13. Those numbers alone suggest there has to be some dealership paring.

The problem is the way Chrysler went about it giving its dealers 26 days to wind down their stores. Terminated dealers are receiving no money from the auto maker including not getting paid for inventory and parts.

It was only after the hearing last week that Chrysler guaranteed to help all its eliminated dealers get rid of their inventory.

GM at least, is paying its dealers who are being terminated. Henderson says its a “modest sum,” but it’s something. In addition, GM, unlike Chrysler, is letting dealers appeal a termination. According to Henderson last week, the auto maker has received more than 500 appeals and has reversed 11 terminations. GM dealers also have till October 2010 to wind down their stores.

You grew up watching your grandparents build a business, investing their life savings along with their tears and sweat. Your father, and perhaps mother, learned from them the value of hard work, honesty and the importance of community. They then taught the same lessons to you.

You watched as your grandparents — and parents after them — gave their money and time to civic organizations, schools and churches while providing jobs to people in town.

Perhaps you worked alongside your parents as a youngster, washing cars, cleaning windows in the showroom or sweeping out the service bays.

And then it was your turn to carry on the legacy. You were loyal to the manufacturer even when you weren’t sure what that was going to get you. You endured zone managers who often were fresh-faced, earnest kids out of college trying to tell you how to run your business.

You listened as the regional manager plopped a market study on your desk saying the market could sustain multiple dealers, while defending putting another dealership a few miles away.

You invested millions building a new facility to be compliant with your manufacturer’s plan of the month.

You tried to find ways to work with the manufacturer when it needed you to take extra vehicles. Yeah, they put the gun to your head and threatened your livelihood to “encourage” you to play ball but you stuck with the manufacturer through the tough times, doing what was necessary to help the brand survive.

Perhaps you even traveled to the nation’s capital a few months ago to lobby Congress to provide emergency funding to your manufacturer.

In February, when your auto maker’s survival was in serious doubt, you ordered more inventory because the company president asked you to.

Even with car sales plummeting, you managed to keep your business profitable and your CSI scores high. You were confident when the rumors of dealership reductions played out in the media. You’ve done everything necessary to protect your business, you’ll be safe.

And then the man in the brown uniform delivered a letter on May 14.

You knew without opening it. The business your grandparents, your parents and your family have built is being ripped from your hands and handed to the dealer a few miles away – the same one your regional manager argued would be good for the marketplace.

All of your investment is gone because the manufacturer, using the protection of bankruptcy, says it doesn’t have to pay you anything.

All because some consultant convinced President Obama’s task force that auto makers need dealers selling higher volumes. “You need more throughput,” they say. Even though they didn’t know what the word meant a couple of months ago.

The manufacturers didn’t push back because they see it as a great opportunity to force their dealers into complying fully with their demands while circumventing state-franchise laws.

The Federal government sees only the bottom line while turning its back on small business. The finance institutions are rewriting the rules and likewise have turned their backs on small business.

And the courts are rubberstamping everything the manufacturer and the task force want.

For dealers, there is no recourse.

This is America? I wonder if this is what the founding fathers envisioned.

Chrysler informed its national dealer council Tuesday in a meeting in Auburn Hills, MI, the company is evaluating the viability of its 3,200 dealerships based on geographic location, financial health, customer satisfaction, condition of facilities and whether they are meeting their minimum sales responsibility.

Also important, court filings seem to indicate dealers could learn how they stand with Chrysler as early as Friday.

You can read the story here.

The stories about a potential tie up between Saturn and Roger Penske might be a bunch of nothing. Someone floated Penske’s name to us three weeks ago, saying he might be interested. After a couple of phone calls, we determined there was no story yet, but decided to keep our ears to the ground.

Penske’s interest pretty much amounts to a “We might want to take a look at it.” Someone familiar with Penske says the business and racing icon’s folks haven’t even looked at the data to see if getting involved with Saturn is feasible.

There’s also a question of timing. General Motors likely would have to provide more time beyond its June 1 deadline of accepting “expressions of interest” for Penske to put something together.

At the moment, this is a non-story. It might have some legs later on, but that won’t be for a couple of weeks at least.

Autobytel’s board of directors responded last week to Trilogy’s attempted takeover with a letter to its shareholders saying it’s not interested. (Read a previous post about Trilogy’s attempt here.)

According to Autobytel, Trilogy used confidential information to put together the hostile offer. Autobytel and Trilogy had been discussing the possibility of Trilogy scoring Autobytel’s leads. Needless to say, that’s a deal that won’t be happening anytime soon.

Trilogy had offered $0.35 to Autobytel’s shareholders, or 32% over the 30-day average which the shares had been trading at. The offer amounted to more than 40% below the averge for the past year.

Trilogy also cited Autobytel’s cash burn, claiming it would be out of cash sometime in 2010. Autobytel countered that claim saying the cash burn in December resulted from one time charges for severance pay for executives that had left.

Autobytel certainly has been a distressed company in recent years, but the $0.35 offer is laughable and it appears Trilogy might have over reached. It’s going to a lot more than that to buy the Internet pioneer.

But the final chapter on this story hasn’t been written yet. Stay tuned.

The two questions Chrysler dealers are asking, Am I on the list (the list of which dealers to eliminate) and What is the criteria for determining which dealers are on that list?

The problem is that Chrysler executives nor members of the automotive task force are talking, leaving just about everybody in the dark.

There are a couple of numbers being mentioned as to how many dealers are on the list. One is 800, based on some fuzzy math from court documents Chrysler filed yesterday.

Another number is much higher — in the 1,500 range. Chrysler President and Vice Chairman Jim Press told dealers last week there was no set number yet, but it would not be “catastrophic.”

Sources tell Ward’s that Chrysler put together as list as early as a month ago at the request of the Treasury Dept. and that the task force actually went through the list several days ago.

I’m speculating here, but I imagine Chrysler’s eight business centers helped put the list together. I can see it now. A business center manager with the zone managers sitting at a table going through list of their dealers determining which ones to eliminate.

You pushed back on taking extra inventory? you’re out. You swore at the zone manager in a meeting or on the phone? You’re out. You failed to upgrade your facilities? You’re out.

It probably was a tad more scientific than that, but until Chrysler steps up and says what the criteria is, then dealers should assume the worst.

The point is, Chrysler dealers have no protection now. Because of the bankruptcy, the state franchise laws provide no cover. Chrysler will use the bankruptcy to allow it to determine which dealers to pay incentive and warranty money to.

Also, the list of “bad” dealers probably already has been given to GMAC Financial, which will use that list to help determine which dealers it will provide floorplan financing to. So there is no protection from the financing sources.

Chrysler’s (Fiat’s) strategy appears to be separating the good assets from the “bad” assets. The good assets will be incorporated into the new Chrysler, while the bad are placed in a “new” holding company, given some money while being left to fend for itself, liquidating assets while defending lawsuits in court for the next 10 years. The problem, the unwanted dealers likely will be part of the “bad” Chrysler.

Here’s the scoop on Saturn… No real scoop until June 1.

If GM can put a deal together with a buyer, Saturn survives. If not, it’s dead at the end of the year.

By the way, we’re predicting Renault will be the manufacturing partner for Saturn, if the brand indeed, is sold.