[aerohead]

No one has ever 'needed' a Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Opel, Holden, Hummer, or Cadillac, but in past times, and presently, those, and some of those divisions had/ have successful-enough marketing campaigns, that enough customers were / are parting with enough money to get their butts in those kinds of seats, such that the bean-counters were/ are comfortable gambling on keeping certain brands in the game.
It seems like that, if Buick can maintain some threshold bottom line, that it would be stupid to let it go, whether or not non-corporate dealerships are part of the calculus or not.
Mary Barra needs all the after-tax revenue she can get to keep GM in the game. All the legacy carmakers have REAL competition.
And the 'value-added' profit-making cars being used to underwrite the transition to BEVs, are in sales decline, which affects economies-of-scale, necessary for profits, creating a reverse-S-curve for ICE vehicle sales, eroding the revenue stream GM and others are depending on for all the capital-intensive investments which will be required to keep up with corporations which are spending zero on marketing, while selling carbon offsets to the legacy carmakers.
It's such a 'new' arithmetic, I don't see how some 'brands' will survive, nor their investors.
I hear that the 'ULTIUM' technology is now dead on arrival. GM is pulling back on 'expectations', reminiscent of EV1. The market may just move ahead with, or without them.
I'd be the last to know about board-room conversations.