I think the CTS is their biggest non-Escalade seller in recent years%u2026 and the most recent CTS-V is actually a great performance car, from all accounts. (example: http://jalopnik.com/5043650/2009-cadillac-cts v-first-drive )
Really, GM has about 7 marques too many, and no clue how to brand them. It used to be that Pontiacs were their performance wing, Cadillacs were ultra-luxury, GMC sold all their trucks, etc. Now most of their marques sell some form of SUV, several have performance cars, several have minivans, etc. And platforms are shared across many of them at different price points, cannibalizing sales from each other.
A few years back I would have said that GM really only sold a couple of Objectively Good cars in America, and now they sell considerably more. But their process is still irreparably broken. Still, they wasted a lot less money developing the XLR (built on the already-solid modern Corvette platform) than they did on the GMT-9000 SUVs (massive, fuel-inefficient, underachieving vehicles rushed to market right as gas hit $4 a gallon at the expense of viable global sedan platforms that were in development)
Wagoner sucked, but it's going to take a lot more than just the shuffling around of one executive spot to turn the company around
In my opinion, in order to make money, they need to get rid of the Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Hummer, and Saab brands, effective immediately. They can keep Chevy & Cadillac. Chevy needs to trim its line down to 3 cars and 2 trucks, and Cadillac needs to make 2 cars and 1 SUV. The cars all need to get between 40-60 mpg, and the trucks and SUV at least 25. Of course, this probably means laying off 70% of the workforce, but that's still better than 100%.
@s!d!r! Glad you were able to add some valuable insight to this topic.
GM needs to start from scratch, and follow the model that Honda and Toyota used. They started with a single model each, and built up from there. However, every time that Honda or Toyota created a new model, it was a best of its class. For example, original Acura Legend and Lexus LS 400 were stellar automobiles.
By contrast, GM throws 30 different models into every class, and hopes that through sheer volume, one of them will stick. This has resulted in MASSIVE fail. Of course, GM pretty much sealed their coffin when they chose to abandon the EV1, the only piece of innovation they've come up with in the last 40 years.
Well, at $110 grand a pop, i'd have to say that car is aimed at the kind of people that aren't affected by "downturns" in the economy. However, that does speak to the larger problem of GM trying to market and develop a car for every demographic on the face of the planet.
@soulcamp GM's already been in talks to sell Hummer for a while now. Problem is, nobody ELSE really wants it that badly, either...
Saturn will probably be okay, since most of the new models they're bringing out are just rebadged Opels, and thus are actually good. Plus, they may still have some residual brand loyalty left over from the 90s, when they last cared about keeping the marque good.
I would personally say that GMC should stay, just to sell all of the trucks and SUVs that GM makes (possible exception to the Escalade since it's an established cash cow). GMC is actually doing decently, because they still have a pretty solid commercial truck business going. (Even though more and more individuals are deserting American pickups for Japanese equivalents, there's still almost no Japanese fleet truck penetration)
I would say Pontiac could stay if GM had enough worthwhile performance cars to populate it with. Problem is, I don't think they do. There are probably enough performance cars across the GM marques to fill a performance division with, but most of them are inalienable from their current marques. The CTS needs to remain a Cadillac because, if Cadillac is going to compete with other luxury marques, they need something to compete against the 5-series, midrange AMG Benzes, etc. The Corvette and Camaro couldn't be anything but Chevrolet. (Of course, GM could have developed the new Camaro platform as a Trans Am, but that model has a less positive connotation, and the time to make that decision would have been years ago, before all the R&D and promotion (Transformers??) that went into pushing the Camaro) This leaves... the Pontiac G8, which is a great car but already a Pontiac; the Solstice and G6, which are mediocre and boring, respectively; and various "SS" versions of cars that suck and would only bring ignominy to a performance brand. Still... I'd hate to see Pontiac go.
Saab could have been saved if GM hadn't neutered it years ago. (pumping out platform-sharing generic crap with a Saab badge on the front (9-7X??? 9-2X, which was okay, but a Subaru and not a Saab at all?) and forsaking the qualities that kept people buying them (reliable, European-designed and built quirky hatchbacks))
Buick can go. Daewoo can go unless GM starts getting some seriously better cheap-market cars out of them. GM NEEDS Opel, so keep it. GM has been cannibalizing Holden pretty heavily, and they do incredibly well in Australia, so they probably need to keep them too (or say goodbye to the Pontiac G8 and some of the better sedan tech GM has these days). Vauxhall is fine but a lot of their models are cannibalized Holdens and Opels as it is%u2026 so that STILL leaves them with too many brands to be manageable, but too few independently good brands to sell off enough to save the ship.
One thing they CAN do is get better at: - consolidating models. Don't duplicate the same demographic of car across several model lines available in the same locality. It wastes money and cannibalizes higher-end sales. - managing Holden/Vauxhall/Opel. Spend less money converting Opels into Saturns and Holdens into Pontiacs and Holdens into Vauxhalls and etc. etc. instead of doing relatively cheap badge-swaps and retests when the car is otherwise perfectly acceptable. (Why the fuck did it take so many millions of dollars to turn the VE Commodore into a G8? Split the front grille, swap in Pontiac badges and get that shit crash and emissions certified, Jesus!) Leverage more of these brands' successful cars in America instead of duplicating effort. People in America are starting to demand smaller, more fuel-efficient cars? SELL THEM SOME OF THE QUALITY CARS YOU SELL IN EUROPE, WHERE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DEMANDING SMALLER, MORE FUEL-EFFICIENT CARS FOR DECADES - read the market better. Don't throw billions of dollars and cancel other developments to fund SUVs when the average layman could tell you that the SUV market is crashing and the Japanese brands are catching up to you anyway. Don't sink so much money into Ethanol power when people want hybrids and electric (god dammit if I see them switch to Hydrogen in their next big push instead of running with Volt electric technology and upscaling I am going to throw my shit). I don't know what it will take to get the company to THINK FUCKING RIGHT (I imagine firing a large portion of management) but I don't see why it needs to be HARD
Nobody wants Hummer, they're now looking at keeping Pontiac as an "exclusive" marque with 1-2 vehicles, and attempts to dump Saab back on the Swedish government met with upturned noses.
Everyone has been aware of the issues for quite a few years, but nobody has had the balls to do anything about it.
And their problems only get worse as you look down the road. Their future retirees are contracted to receive HUGE pensions due to pumped up pressure from unions over the last 30 years. Bankruptcy has increasingly become the only viable option.
Before Steve Jobs' return to Apple, they had something like 30 different products and three different operating systems in development. Even the most die-hard Apple people couldn't tell the difference between most models. They were a disaster. When Jobs returned, he slashed and burned nearly everything, leaving them with only three product lines to focus on. Eventually, the company was rebuilt, adding new products one at a time, and are now a strong, highly profitable company again.
I think GM needs to do something very similar. They need to Think Different, for lack of a better slogan.
@scurvyman So how many of those things you think GM is going to try? Like you said, getting rid of just Wagoner isn't going to be enough. All of the boneheads at the top need to go and be replaced with fresh thinkers who have nothing to lose.
So, GM is closing or selling Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, and Hummer. They are keeping Chevy, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick. I still think GMC's truck line can be folded into Chevy, but if they fold the Chevy trucks into GMC, I guess it makes sense. But Buick still serves no real purpose (if you want luxury, pick a Caddy). WTF are they keeping it for? Does anybody really want to drive a LaCrosse or a Lucerne?
posted on Tuesday, Mar 31st by soulcamp
No, but the STS ain't a bad car from what i've read/heard.
It's a $110K Cadillac roadster. Seriously? Was there really a market for this? I want to know how many General Motors sold over the last few years?
My 6-year old could run this company better...
link/pic no showy? you talkin' 'bout the XLR?
Yeah, thousands of people, apparently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_XLR#Yearly_American_sales
Cadillac should make 2 cars - the STS (for stupid rich people), and the Escalade (for drug dealers). Other than that, nobody wants to buy a Cadillac.
Or a Buick, a Pontiac, a GMC, a Saturn, a Hummer, or a Saab, for that matter.
@Ethan Haha - less than 2000 a year. I bet this one made GM a fortune!
I think the CTS is their biggest non-Escalade seller in recent years%u2026 and the most recent CTS-V is actually a great performance car, from all accounts. (example: http://jalopnik.com/5043650/2009-cadillac-cts v-first-drive )
Really, GM has about 7 marques too many, and no clue how to brand them. It used to be that Pontiacs were their performance wing, Cadillacs were ultra-luxury, GMC sold all their trucks, etc. Now most of their marques sell some form of SUV, several have performance cars, several have minivans, etc. And platforms are shared across many of them at different price points, cannibalizing sales from each other.
A few years back I would have said that GM really only sold a couple of Objectively Good cars in America, and now they sell considerably more. But their process is still irreparably broken. Still, they wasted a lot less money developing the XLR (built on the already-solid modern Corvette platform) than they did on the GMT-9000 SUVs (massive, fuel-inefficient, underachieving vehicles rushed to market right as gas hit $4 a gallon at the expense of viable global sedan platforms that were in development)
Wagoner sucked, but it's going to take a lot more than just the shuffling around of one executive spot to turn the company around
@soulcamp Yeah, wikipedia says CTSs sold closer to 55-60,000 a year
In my opinion, in order to make money, they need to get rid of the Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Hummer, and Saab brands, effective immediately. They can keep Chevy & Cadillac. Chevy needs to trim its line down to 3 cars and 2 trucks, and Cadillac needs to make 2 cars and 1 SUV. The cars all need to get between 40-60 mpg, and the trucks and SUV at least 25. Of course, this probably means laying off 70% of the workforce, but that's still better than 100%.
no they don't that is some stupid analysis right there
Write GM and Obama a letter, maybe you can take over as CEO and they won't have to be bailed out. Clearly you know more than they do. :|
@s!d!r! Glad you were able to add some valuable insight to this topic.
GM needs to start from scratch, and follow the model that Honda and Toyota used. They started with a single model each, and built up from there. However, every time that Honda or Toyota created a new model, it was a best of its class. For example, original Acura Legend and Lexus LS 400 were stellar automobiles.
By contrast, GM throws 30 different models into every class, and hopes that through sheer volume, one of them will stick. This has resulted in MASSIVE fail. Of course, GM pretty much sealed their coffin when they chose to abandon the EV1, the only piece of innovation they've come up with in the last 40 years.
Well, at $110 grand a pop, i'd have to say that car is aimed at the kind of people that aren't affected by "downturns" in the economy. However, that does speak to the larger problem of GM trying to market and develop a car for every demographic on the face of the planet.
@JasAsian v2.0 It'd be OK if they only tried to develop ONE car for every demographic. But how many SUVs does GM have across its entire product line?
@bold as love They don't need to be bailed out. They need to fold.
Maybe they'll transfer my warranty over to Toyota. About the time ONE (1) bay area stereo shop has a dash kit for the 08 Matrix/Vibe.
I have three of them. Why, did you want to borrow one?
@soulcamp GM's already been in talks to sell Hummer for a while now. Problem is, nobody ELSE really wants it that badly, either...
Saturn will probably be okay, since most of the new models they're bringing out are just rebadged Opels, and thus are actually good. Plus, they may still have some residual brand loyalty left over from the 90s, when they last cared about keeping the marque good.
I would personally say that GMC should stay, just to sell all of the trucks and SUVs that GM makes (possible exception to the Escalade since it's an established cash cow). GMC is actually doing decently, because they still have a pretty solid commercial truck business going. (Even though more and more individuals are deserting American pickups for Japanese equivalents, there's still almost no Japanese fleet truck penetration)
I would say Pontiac could stay if GM had enough worthwhile performance cars to populate it with. Problem is, I don't think they do. There are probably enough performance cars across the GM marques to fill a performance division with, but most of them are inalienable from their current marques. The CTS needs to remain a Cadillac because, if Cadillac is going to compete with other luxury marques, they need something to compete against the 5-series, midrange AMG Benzes, etc. The Corvette and Camaro couldn't be anything but Chevrolet. (Of course, GM could have developed the new Camaro platform as a Trans Am, but that model has a less positive connotation, and the time to make that decision would have been years ago, before all the R&D and promotion (Transformers??) that went into pushing the Camaro) This leaves... the Pontiac G8, which is a great car but already a Pontiac; the Solstice and G6, which are mediocre and boring, respectively; and various "SS" versions of cars that suck and would only bring ignominy to a performance brand. Still... I'd hate to see Pontiac go.
Saab could have been saved if GM hadn't neutered it years ago. (pumping out platform-sharing generic crap with a Saab badge on the front (9-7X??? 9-2X, which was okay, but a Subaru and not a Saab at all?) and forsaking the qualities that kept people buying them (reliable, European-designed and built quirky hatchbacks))
Buick can go. Daewoo can go unless GM starts getting some seriously better cheap-market cars out of them. GM NEEDS Opel, so keep it. GM has been cannibalizing Holden pretty heavily, and they do incredibly well in Australia, so they probably need to keep them too (or say goodbye to the Pontiac G8 and some of the better sedan tech GM has these days). Vauxhall is fine but a lot of their models are cannibalized Holdens and Opels as it is%u2026 so that STILL leaves them with too many brands to be manageable, but too few independently good brands to sell off enough to save the ship.
One thing they CAN do is get better at:
- consolidating models. Don't duplicate the same demographic of car across several model lines available in the same locality. It wastes money and cannibalizes higher-end sales.
- managing Holden/Vauxhall/Opel. Spend less money converting Opels into Saturns and Holdens into Pontiacs and Holdens into Vauxhalls and etc. etc. instead of doing relatively cheap badge-swaps and retests when the car is otherwise perfectly acceptable. (Why the fuck did it take so many millions of dollars to turn the VE Commodore into a G8? Split the front grille, swap in Pontiac badges and get that shit crash and emissions certified, Jesus!) Leverage more of these brands' successful cars in America instead of duplicating effort. People in America are starting to demand smaller, more fuel-efficient cars? SELL THEM SOME OF THE QUALITY CARS YOU SELL IN EUROPE, WHERE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DEMANDING SMALLER, MORE FUEL-EFFICIENT CARS FOR DECADES
- read the market better. Don't throw billions of dollars and cancel other developments to fund SUVs when the average layman could tell you that the SUV market is crashing and the Japanese brands are catching up to you anyway. Don't sink so much money into Ethanol power when people want hybrids and electric (god dammit if I see them switch to Hydrogen in their next big push instead of running with Volt electric technology and upscaling I am going to throw my shit). I don't know what it will take to get the company to THINK FUCKING RIGHT (I imagine firing a large portion of management) but I don't see why it needs to be HARD
I guess that is really a few things, but ykwim
for example
Yeah, I bought a car once.
jay def wins
The Obama Administration seriously needs to explore making Scurvy its "CAR CZAR" so he can start cleaning up this shit on his days off.
Yay! What do I win?
Old news.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=amIqBBYGRh5Q&refer=worldwide
Nobody wants Hummer, they're now looking at keeping Pontiac as an "exclusive" marque with 1-2 vehicles, and attempts to dump Saab back on the Swedish government met with upturned noses.
Everyone has been aware of the issues for quite a few years, but nobody has had the balls to do anything about it.
And their problems only get worse as you look down the road. Their future retirees are contracted to receive HUGE pensions due to pumped up pressure from unions over the last 30 years.
Bankruptcy has increasingly become the only viable option.
HONOUR AND GLORY, JAY DEF. HONOUR AND GLORY AND POWER.
You know, Slowpoke has it right. It's not strategy that's an issue - it's execution.
An old B-School saying is that you don't need the perfect strategy, you just need the perfect execution.
So really, there's no use talking about this - unless between us all here we may find the key to do this easily, cheaply and quickly.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/gms-problems-are-50-years-in-making.html
@kirsty! Ooo! Honour spelled with a 'U'. Even better! :)
"Car czar" sounds like "Charizard!"
RAWR.
@MisterDarcy I would agree, except that flawless execution of a flawed strategy will also get you nowhere.
Before Steve Jobs' return to Apple, they had something like 30 different products and three different operating systems in development. Even the most die-hard Apple people couldn't tell the difference between most models. They were a disaster. When Jobs returned, he slashed and burned nearly everything, leaving them with only three product lines to focus on. Eventually, the company was rebuilt, adding new products one at a time, and are now a strong, highly profitable company again.
I think GM needs to do something very similar. They need to Think Different, for lack of a better slogan.
@scurvyman So how many of those things you think GM is going to try? Like you said, getting rid of just Wagoner isn't going to be enough. All of the boneheads at the top need to go and be replaced with fresh thinkers who have nothing to lose.
So, GM is closing or selling Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, and Hummer. They are keeping Chevy, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick. I still think GMC's truck line can be folded into Chevy, but if they fold the Chevy trucks into GMC, I guess it makes sense. But Buick still serves no real purpose (if you want luxury, pick a Caddy). WTF are they keeping it for? Does anybody really want to drive a LaCrosse or a Lucerne?
@soulcamp Cuz for some reason they still can sell the hell out of a Buicks in China. I didn't believe it myself the first time I heard it:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16268883/
@JasAsian v2.0 o.O
@soulcamp Yeah, who'd have thunk it, right?
@soulcamp Yeah, who'd have thunk it, right?