News 12 at 6 o'clock--May 15, 2009

AIKEN--A day after Chrysler announced it would stop shipping cars to nearly 800 dealerships, GM sends out notices that it will be downsizing the number of dealers it works with. That will affect at least two dealers in Aiken.

General Motors say this is all part of a plan to get the company back to profitability. But to get there, the company is effectively closing 1100 dealerships.

Johnson Motor Company of South Carolina and Henna Chevrolet are 2 of those 1100. Managers at both are, to say the least, disappointed.

Both dealerships got letters in the mail today saying they would no longer be a part of the GM family after October 2010, just about a year and a half away.

But say they're both disappointed with how all of this turned out.

But for now, Johnson Motors' owner says it's business as usual for his company and the same sentiments were echoed by management at Henna.

"We plan to stay in business, sell cars and we plan to service like we have been. Hopefully they'll change their minds and decide to keep us." said Henna General Sales Manager Jimmy Scott.

Johnson Motors of South Carolina and Henna Chevrolet are the only two local dealerships we have confirmed that are closing.

There are unconfirmed reports that Stokes-Hodges GM in Thomson is closing too, but again, that is not official.

The ones we've confirmed that are staying open are Master Pontiac Buick GMC, Herlong Chevrolet Pontiac Buick and Gordon Chevrolet. There is a long list of other area GM dealerships, but we were not able to confirm anything with them.

Both Johnson and Henna say they will appeal as far as they can go with this.

With the Chrysler closings, we had a full list of the dealerships. With General Motors, we don't. The reason for that is Chrysler is in bankruptcy court and something like this would be entered into public record.

General Motors is not in bankruptcy as of right now, so this is just a private company decision and is not subject to public record.