If you’re reading this, you clearly have some interest in the car business, and spend some time online, so you have no doubt already stumbled over the news that GM has purchased AmeriCredit. Let’s go one step further and assume that since you’re reading a blog on Carloanco.com that you probably have at least a passing involvement in Special Finance, which probably has left you wondering if this acquisition is a good thing for sub-prime or not. Will GM turn AmeriCredit into the new GMAC, only servicing GM dealers and primarily looking for A paper, or will service the whole gamut, possibly spinning off a sub-prime division like the old Nuvell? My guess is neither of these will happen.

At this point I don’t know any more than you do, since this purchase was just announced today, but the landscape seems to lend itself to AmeriCredit sticking with what they’re good at, at least for a while. GM seems to have carved out a comfortable relationship with Ally Financial to service their prime and super prime paper, so why not bring on AmeriCredit with the intent of allowing them to continue to service the customers upon which they have built their business? I think that AmeriCredit (or whatever they end up being named) will continue to be a higher end sub-prime bank, giving a lot of dealers a way to go when a 560 walks into their showroom and wants to buy a new car.

My real question is will AmeriCredit continue to service non-GM dealers? My guess is that they won’t sign any new business from outside of the GM family, but if you’re already in and have a performing portfolio you’re probably OK. Things will no doubt be up in the air for a while, but AmeriCredit has been pretty successful lately with the dealers with whom they currently do business, so it seems like a no brainer to keep doing business with those folks long term. If you aren’t a GM dealer and want to keep AmeriCredit as a lender, it is probably worth taking a little time this week to see how your portfolio is performing, and to shoot them an extra deal or two that you might have put elsewhere.