Thousand Oaks the Nerve Center for GM Marketing West

A little-noticed building in Thousand Oaks is the nerve center for marketing 46 models of General Motors cars throughout the West, housing more than 200 employees who direct GM’s sales and public affairs operations from Texas to Hawaii and Alaska.

Among other things, the two-story center--at an address that company officials prefer to keep secret lest it become a target of anyone holding a grievance against America’s No. 1 auto maker--was the birthplace of GM’s highly publicized “value selling” experiment. It’s an effort to put a realistic sticker price on a car, something close to the final, actual sales price.

The program, which is supposed to eliminate bargaining from auto retailing, was launched in California and is being phased in nationwide.

In all, the Thousand Oaks facility is responsible for planning and carrying out marketing strategies for six GM nameplates--Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Saturn.

It also houses top Western officials of GMC Trucks, as well as the auto maker’s financing arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp., and Motors Holding, a GM division that helps establish new dealerships.

“Detroit gives all of us a great deal of independence,” said one of the center’s key officials, Carl E. Sheffer, Western regional public affairs director for North American operations. “We have our own board of directors, which makes many of the policy decisions affecting GM operations in 16 Western states.”

When it opened in 1985, the center brought together several units that were formerly based in Westlake Village and the San Fernando Valley. Since then, additional operations have moved in from Santa Monica and Century City.

The center’s location in Southern California, long known as a prime market for foreign-built cars, has been particularly challenging, Sheffer said.

“We lost market share for a number of years, but that’s finally turned around. We expect GM’s share of the market in this region to increase several percentage points this year.” For example, GM says, Pontiac’s retail sales in California through March of this year were up 82% to 5,158, compared with a year ago.

In the first five months of the current model year, the company’s sales in the West were up 30% over the same period a year ago, Sheffer reported. He credited the value-selling program and an improved perception of American-made autos for much of the increase.