Oshawa, Ontario – General Motors announced today that Oldsmobile will be phased out over the next few years. GM will continue to actively market Oldsmobile products during the transition period.
General Motors of Canada Limited president and general manager, Maureen Kempston Darkes said, "This decision will allow us to focus our resources on innovative product development, shorter life cycles and reduced cost to bring our customers an even stronger line-up of cars and trucks."
Kempston Darkes said, "We want to assure our Oldsmobile customers that we will continue to be there with excellent parts and service to meet their needs, and we will focus on keeping them in the GM family. Accordingly, we will be writing to our recent Oldsmobile customers to offer them a $2000 certificate towards the purchase or lease of a new Oldsmobile or a $1250 certificate towards the purchase or lease of any other GM product.
"We will be talking directly to every Chevrolet-Oldsmobile dealer across this country over the coming days to discuss with them how to make this a smooth transition. While it's sad to be phasing out the venerable Oldsmobile name, we think that this will allow GM and our dealers to focus our product development, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and retail resources on the core Chevrolet products and enhance our overall line-up so that everyone – our customers, our dealers and GM – will emerge winners."
GM of Canada has 477 dealers across Canada that sell the Oldsmobile brand. Oldsmobile sales to date this calendar year total about 28,000 units.