Which GM claims, and which Roger Penske bought, then one has to wonder why GM couldn't break the code and make it work.
It seems that sometime back in the mid to late `90s, GM made the decision to "fuck the future, we'll settle for short-term profits now." They killed the EV-1 and they stopped doing design and engineering work for new Saturn models for a ten year span. In a lot of ways, GM is where they are, not because of retiree health costs or because they paid their workers well, but because they largely made shitty vehicles. Oh, they were better than they once were, but quality is a moving target and GM's point of aim was almost always lagging the target. GM could have reduced the cost of every vehicle they sold by $3,000 and, other than heavy pickup trucks, they still would have gone under.
But they made good commercials and they got some cheezy-ass singer to sing "we're an American brand" as background music to their spots. Which brings me to my rule of thumb for products: When a company tells you that you should buy their product because it is "made in America", that is an admission that their product is a piece of shit. When it comes to marketing, patriotism is the refuge of the inferior.
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5 comments:
you're right on the money. i sold chevrolet's for 14 years and GM has been managementally bankrupt for 30 years. i also believe that the demise of the manufacturing base in this country was foresaken by management for short term profits to bolster their stocks share price so management could reap higher pay through stock options.
Who were the insiders responsible?
I'd like to see someone keep a list.
Russ, you rock hard. I would so like to see this publicized everyday all over blogtopia - until it sinks into even the thickest cerebral cortexes.
Thanks for your reporting.
S
Saturn was built on the idea that people wanted buying a car to be as simple as buying a toaster: you walk in, get what you want, the price is clearly on the box, you pay what it says and you go. It was unfortunately also built on the idea that people who didn't want to haggle with a car salesman would put up with ugly, unreliable cars.
Some years back I saw a statement by a GM exec about the general shift of consumers to Japanese cars on quality grounds. He said that was unfair because -- and this is verbatim -- "We've made great strides in closing the quality gap."
In other words, the most defensible claim this yahoo could make was "You should buy our cars, because they suck less than they used to"...
Russ, today I heard a piece on NPR about the history of domestic car production, which included the tidbit that Pontiac used basically the same chassis for 35 years.
Deadstick, I've heard much the same comments, too. Just pathetic.
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