A GM bankruptcy kills warranties

With bankruptcy for General Motors seeming more likely every day, has anyone stopped to consider the manufacturer's warranty issue?

As it stands now, the U.S. Treasury is guaranteeing GM warranties to consumers. That's all well and good, but actually getting your vehicle serviced will require going to your local GM dealership for service, assuming it is willing to work on your vehicle at all.

With a GM bankruptcy, we dealers become unsecured creditors who will be getting in line with everyone else to collect our receivables. The problem is the dealers will be just about the last in line. That means the hundreds of thousands of dollars we all have in factory receivables may or not get paid.

If the money does get paid, payment could be painfully slow. Our working capital could be consumed, and we would no longer be able or willing to perform warranty repairs.

In that case, the U.S. Treasury's protecting consumer warranties does no good because there will be no dealers willing to repair the vehicles.

Hasn't anyone thought of that? The GM franchise system could fall apart in days.