WASHINGTON – General Motors CEO Dan Akerson held an introductory private meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, spokesmen for the government and the automaker told Automotive News.

GM is expected to launch an initial public offering of its stock as early as next month at an undisclosed price. The U.S. Treasury owns about 61 percent of the automaker after spending about $50 billion to rescue it.

GM spokesman Greg Martin and a Treasury spokesman today described the meeting in New York City as a “meet and greet.”

“This is the first time their schedules matched,” Martin said in an e-mail.

A Treasury spokesman said the meeting “will be a general discussion on the state of the industry and the business.”

Neither spokesman would discuss details about the meeting after it concluded.

In addition to its plans to offer shares to the public, GM also is giving about 600,000 employees and retirees in the United States and Canada the chance to buy the shares.

Akerson, a longtime telecommunications industry executive who later headed buyouts at The Carlyle Group equity firm, was named GM’s CEO in August, when Ed Whitacre stepped down for a longer-term CEO to guide the company as it exits government ownership. Akerson had been a member of GM’s board since it emerged from bankruptcy in July 2009.

While Akerson has not commented directly on the IPO due to U.S. securities regulations, he said last month that the process of paying back taxpayers could take “several years.”

CLARKSTON, Mich. — For two decades, Chuck Fortinberry made a decent living selling Chryslers and Jeeps in this town 40 miles north of Detroit.

Then last year, as part of Chrysler Group LLC’s bankruptcy reorganization, Chrysler sent a letter informing him that his Clarkston Chrysler Jeep dealership was among 789 dealers the automaker was dropping.

Since then, Fortinberry has been on a journey to salvage something from his business and map out a new future. About 10 miles from his darkened dealership, Fortinberry has opened Ironton Rustic Furniture and Accessories, offering everything from tables and chairs to beds and couches, reported The Wall Street Journal.

“Selling Chryslers wasn’t just my job, this is what I was,” the 54-year-old Fortinberry said. “I was the Chrysler-Jeep dealer in Clarkston. I was the guy you went to when you needed jerseys for your baseball team. There was a lot I had to get through but I knew I had to move on.”

Across the country, hundreds of car dealers are facing the same challenge while struggling with the taxes and other costs of maintaining a large piece of commercial property. Selling the land isn’t an option for many of them, given the poor real-estate market

Last year, 1,603 dealerships closed their doors, most as a result of the Chrysler and General Motors Co. bankruptcies, according to Urban Science, a Detroit-based consulting firm. An additional 309 dealerships went dark in the first eight months of this year.

The closures leave about 18,170 dealerships in the U.S. employing 912,200 workers. More closings are now on tap after Ford Motor Co. last week said it wants to cut 175 of its Lincoln dealers within the next two years.

A dealership’s closure can have a big economic impact in a small town. The average dealership last year employed 49 people and had an annual payroll of $2.4 million, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. The payroll for all U.S. dealerships last year was $43.5 billion, and represented almost 13 percent of the nation’s total retail-trade payroll, the association said.

Although there are no national studies, auto makers say many of the affected dealers who were already selling other brands have simply carried on by focusing on those remaining makes or by selling used cars.

Chrysler said as many as 85 percent of the 789 dealers it dropped are now selling other car brands. GM offered no estimate of how many of its 1,549 dealers set to lose their GM franchises Nov. 1 might stay in business by selling other brands.

General Motors Co. is giving about 600,000 employees and retirees in the United States and Canada the chance to buy stock in the company’s upcoming initial public offering at the IPO price, reported Automotive News.

GM is offering the directed share program as part of an IPO scheduled for November.

In a letter dated Sept. 30 to employees and retirees, the automaker asked employees and retirees to pre-register their interest in the share purchase program online or via mail by October 15.

The letter says that the company has not determined a maximum or minimum number of shares that an employee or retiree can buy under the program.

The minimum investment is expected to be greater than $1,000, however, according to the letter obtained today by Automotive News.

GM has yet to determine the initial share price of its initial public offering.

Directed share programs are a common way for employees to buy stock in their employers.

GM spokesman Pete Ternes confirmed today that the letter had been sent. But he declined to give details because of regulations governing comments about the upcoming IPO.

Analysts believe the IPO could be one of the largest in recent history, allowing the U.S. government to recoup $8 billion – $10 billion of the more than $49.5 billion it spent to rescue the automaker.

The U.S. government owns about 61 percent of GM, and the Canadian and Ontario governments control 11.7 percent. An independent health care trust controlled by the UAW owns another 17.5 percent of the automaker.

Ternes said GM has received some feedback from employees and retirees that they had not received the letter as of today. He said the company would communicate to employees if an extension is allowed.

The program is being offered to salaried and hourly employees and retirees.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is administering the GM share program.

GM has about 54,000 UAW-represented hourly employees and nearly 400,000 UAW retirees.

Lincoln dealers have until early January to make a life-or-death decision: Invest to meet service and dealership standards or lose the franchise, Automotive News reported.

Lincoln plans to drop 200 or so of its almost 1,200 franchises, mostly in 130 metro markets, in an effort to rehabilitate the sagging luxury brand.

“Dealers will decide,” said Mark Fields, Ford Motor Co.’s president of the Americas. But the reality is that any dealer who does not agree to upgrades negotiated with Lincoln field staffers will get whatever severance compensation Lincoln offers.

Fewer than 25 percent of all Lincoln dealerships currently meet the automaker’s standards, the company says.

It’s all part of a Ford initiative to make Lincoln more competitive with other luxury brands by improving products, customer experience and financing.

On key measures of brand success — U.S. sales, sales per dealership, loyalty rates and residual value — Lincoln ranks at or near the bottom of nine luxury brands.

While mass-market Ford division has rebounded this year to become the top-selling brand in the United States, Lincoln has slumped.

In 1998, Lincoln was the top U.S. luxury brand with 187,121 sales. Last year Lincoln’s 82,847 sales were less than half those of market leaders Lexus, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

“Dealers know it’s screwed up,” said Bob Tasca Jr., a Rhode Island dealer and head of Lincoln’s dealer council. “We are looking for a chance to change. It has to change, because the way it is isn’t working.”

Ford plans to reverse Lincoln’s slide with changes in product, dealerships and lending.

“We are committed to Lincoln,” Fields said at a media briefing following a meeting with 900 dealership personnel last week in Dearborn, Mich. Among the highlights:

• Lincoln will introduce “seven new or remodeled vehicles in the next four years,” Fields said. Lincoln now sells three cars and three light trucks.
• “Ford Motor Credit Corp. will be available to help Lincoln dealers invest” and Ford’s captive lender also is creating an internal unit to cater to Lincoln customers seeking loans, said Ken Czubay, Ford’s vice president for U.S. marketing sales and service.
• Lincoln wants dealers to improve the “customer experience,” said Ford global sales boss Jim Farley. He outlined upgraded “customer touchpoints” in dealerships, including higher standards for loaner vehicles and car washes.

Adding urgency to many dealers’ decisions is the wind-down by year end of Mercury. For decades Mercury had provided half or more of the volume of dualed Lincoln-Mercury stores.

The severance package for dealers who decide against the upgrades was not announced at the press event last week.

DETROIT – General Motors Co.’s GMC and Buick, the fastest-growing brand in the U.S. this year, are considering a courtesy loaner program for customers getting warranty service on their vehicles to build awareness of the company’s products.

GM may start the service in the “next couple weeks,” Brian Sweeney, vice president of sales for Buick and GMC, said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. The program would seek to get GMC Acadia owners into a Buick Enclave, for example, and build recognition of more GM vehicles, he said.

“We want to expose customers to other Buick and GMC products,” said Sweeney, who last week met with about 900 dealers that sell the two brands.

Dealers selling Buick need to change and meet the expectations customers have when shopping for a premium car, said Mike Bowsher, co-chairman of the national dealer council for Buick-GMC and president of Carl Black Automotive Group.

“We can’t sell Buicks like we did Pontiac,” Bowsher, who runs dealerships in Georgia, Tennessee and Florida, said in a telephone interview. “A lot of us were old Pontiac dealers, and we now have to learn how to handle the Lexus, Ritz-Carlton, Cadillac, Mercedes kind of crowd.”

Some Buick-GMC dealers already make loaner vehicles available to customers, Bowsher said. GM may push dealers to make the practice standard, he said.

Buick outpaced all other brands with a 58 percent increase in U.S. sales through September compared with the same nine months of 2009, according to the Automotive News data center. GMC sales rose 31 percent.

GM pared its U.S. brands to Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC as part of its bankruptcy last year. Hummer, Saturn and Pontiac were shuttered and Saab was sold as the company received $50 billion from the federal government while restructuring.

GM said last week it would add the Verano compact car to Buick, the brand’s first small car in more than 20 years. The company hasn’t announced when production of the Verano will begin at GM’s Orion assembly plant in Orion Township, Mich.

Buick also will add a sport-utility vehicle that will be smaller than the Enclave, and a higher performance version of the Regal sedan called the Regal GS, Sweeney said. The Verano and smaller SUV follow new models including the Regal earlier this year and the LaCrosse mid-sized sedan last year.

Detroit’s automakers have been losing ground in their home market since 1996, but they’re halting that trend this year at the expense of their Japanese rivals.

The shift reflects big gains in the U.S. auto market by a resurgent Ford Motor Co. and a retreat by Toyota Motor Corp., bruised by a spate of recalls totaling millions of vehicles over the past year, reported The Detroit News.

This year, Ford’s market share is up 1.5 points, to 16.7 percent from 15.2 percent in the first nine months of 2009.

Toyota’s share has fallen to 15.2 percent from 16.6 percent over the same period.

General Motors Co.’s share has dipped to 19 percent from 19.6 percent after it shed or eliminated four brands as part of its restructuring under bankruptcy.

Chrysler Group LLC’s share has edged up to 9.5 percent from 9.2 percent, helped by the successful launch of an all-new Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV.

Overall, the U.S. automakers’ combined share of the American light vehicle market has risen to 45.1 percent from 43.9 percent, while the combined share of the Asian brands slipped to 46.4 percent from 47.8 percent, according to Autodata Corp.

The European brands’ share is essentially flat, at 8.4 percent this year from 8.3 percent in 2009.

Forecasting firm J.D. Power and Associates estimates the U.S. automakers will end the year with the first rise in their combined market share since 1995.

That year, the U.S. automakers, excluding their foreign brands, such as Saab, held 73.1 percent of the market. But after 14 years of continuous declines, their share had shrunk to 44.1 percent in 2009.

This year, the domestics are likely to gain about a point of share, said Jeff Schuster, forecasting director at J.D. Power. “We’re looking over the next two or three years for the domestics to stabilize their share” at current levels of around 45 percent, he said.

Among Japan’s leading automakers, Nissan Motor Co. is the only one to have gained market share this year. Toyota was hurt by the recalls, and Honda Motor Co. also lost share. Aside from the Odyssey minivan now being launched, it didn’t have any major new models, said Masaki Taketani, a Northville-based analyst at IHS Automotive.

Toyota and Honda are both preparing to launch more models in the United States, he said, while the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group and Volkswagen AG are likely to be increasingly important forces in the market.