Re: Automotive News

Posted by BH On 2009/9/25 9:14:56

All:

Let me add that it took more than Iaccoca's personal talent and mere marketing presence (and a strong motivation to rub HFII's nose in it) to bring Chrysler back from the brink. At first, I simply thought that he stole as much good automotive talent as he could from Ford to come up with some badly needed new product and then sign up as many new dealers as he could to help full up the assembly lines with orders. In retrospect, however, I can see now that he also assembled a team of people with the right connections not only within the industry, but to the gubbamint, to carry Chrysler through its financial crisis. I think Jim Nance would have tipped his hat to ol' Lido. (Unfortunately, that same team wasn't very adept at managing their success, and neither was any that followed.)

I don't see any thing like that going on with GM. In fact, I heard that they recently eliminated all of their field service, parts, and sales positions and will be closing all of their Zone Offices. While the roots of GM's troubles go back to the 1970s, Roger B. Smith was probably the worst thing to ever happen to that company, and his legacy reaches far beyond his tenure.

While I can agree that Japanese imports were a bunch of rust buckets 20+ years ago (and would have never consider purchase of one back then), I'm seeing a lot of rust problem on GM vehicles NOW as state highway departments in the Penn-Ohio are appear to have reintroduced calcium chloride AND have added salt brine to the equation. However, I also belive that the material quality of GM's steel parts isn't as good as it was 20 years ago, but the prices for their vehicles are higher than ever.

Meanwhile, GM keeps coming out with a bunch of products that nobody was really looking for, while hot cars designed to attract people to showrooms show up "a day late and a dollar short". Another problem is too much emphasis on "skimming the cream", while neglecting the base markets. Somewhere along the 1990s, they decided to not worry about building entry-level cars and let used cars fill that need, which only ran shoppers off into the arms of their competition.

While GM's vast dealer network had been one of its strengths, it seems like the best and brightest dealers retired years ago. The recent drawdown in dealer count is GM's thinly-veiled way of getting rid of a lot of smaller dealers in rural markets (from a thwarted direct attempt to do so 15 years ago). Yet, all that does is make me drive past even more stores that offer competing brands. I now have to drive 15-20 miles from my hometown and past two Toyota and two Honda stores just to get to a Chevy dealer.

It's a sad situation when you consider that - except for the Packards - my family has owned nothing but GM product as daily drivers for decades, but those days are at an end. While those are just my personal reflections, I'd bet that I'm not alone in that regard.