SCHENECTADY — City mainstay Wedekind Pontiac late last month stopped selling new cars and sold its franchise back to General Motors Corp.

The family-owned dealership on Aug. 1 became strictly a used car operation and gave up the Pontiac part of its name. The 87-year-old dealership on State Street now goes by its original name, Wedekind Motors.

Wedekind became a Pontiac dealer in 1979. Before that, it operated as a Chrysler, Dodge, Dodge Truck and Imperial dealership.

“They didn’t want a dealer in Schenectady because they feel they should be elsewhere, and we didn’t want to move,” Wedekind co-owner David Elmendorf said of GM.

GM approached Elmendorf in May about moving his franchise, even though he said he outsold other Pontiac dealers in the area. The deal came at a time when GM is increasingly trying to combine its Pontiac, GMC and Buick franchises at dealerships.

Now sitting on Wedekind’s lot are about 85 used cars. Prior to giving up its franchise, the dealership featured 40 to 80 new Pontiacs along with about 60 used vehicles.

Elmendorf acquired the dealership with his father from the Wedekind family in 1985.

The dealership shed about five employees along with the Pontiac franchise, bringing its work force to 28. Wedekind will keep its parts, body shop and service arms.

Elmendorf could not say what GM would do with his Pontiac franchise. He said it was “nuts” the Detroit auto giant wanted to take the franchise out of Schenectady.

When contacted Thursday, GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakof in Detroit said she was not familiar with the Wedekind issue.

Elmendorf said he had long discussed a deal with Capitaland GMC Truck-Subaru in Glenville, but GM would not sign off on it. Garontakof would not say whether GM is looking to place Wedekind’s Pontiac franchise elsewhere in the region. However, she said the company has a rigourous process of identifying opportunities to combine dealerships.

Since 2005, GM has been aggressively attempting to place its franchises into four “channels,” such as the Pontiac-GMC-Buick channel. It also has a Saturn channel, a Chevrolet channel and a Cadillac-Saab-Hummer channel. While the channeling strategy has helped sales slightly, the company continues to suffer from the fallout of $4-per-gallon gasoline and consumer flight from trucks to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.