Black Dealer Alleges `Redlining' By GM in His Loss of Franchise
March 28, 2011
NEW YORK -- A prominent African-American car dealer filed suit against General Motors Corp., alleging that GM violated his civil rights by wrongfully stripping him of a Cadillac dealership he had operated in Bronx, N.Y., for 23 years. In the civil suit, which seeks a total of $357 million in damages from the auto maker, dealer Diego Alva accuses GM of relying on ``discriminatory racial criteria'' to carry out the company's plans to revamp its dealerships. Mr. Alvera lost his Cadillac franchise in New York City's Bronx borough in 2010 and failed in a subsequent attempt to relocate to neighboring Yonkers, N.Y. In the complaint, Mr. Alvera charged that GM's dealer strategy, called Project 2015, has been used ``as a means to justify elimination of dealerships in minority areas such as the South Bronx, in a thinly veiled effort to `redline' such areas.'' Mr. Alvera charged that GM's criteria to evaluate dealerships included crime statistics, per capita income and demographic information, which he argued in the complaint ``are irrelevant to the ability of a dealership to successfully sell or service automobiles.'' A GM spokesman said the company would have no comment because it hadn't yet been served with the lawsuit. GM, whose dealers are facing an unprecedented level of competition from new ``megadealerships,'' says it is trying to move 1950s-era dealerships into the 1990s by renovating some, closing others and relocating still others to busier areas.
