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The Bold new face of GM:http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/the-bold-new-face-of-gm.aspx?GT1=33002

Now, I'm not trying to say that Iacocca was the best thing that happened to the industry since the invention of the wheel, but there's no one at GM who can hold a candle to him - at least, not WRT the effect that his advertising presence had for Chrysler nearly 30 years ago.

Of course, P/R only goes so far. Ya gotta have the product to back it up, and I just don't believe that GM does anymore - hasn't for a long time.

I think they are fighting 30+ years of pissed off customers who bought one or more GM cars and had the thing $300-$500 them to death after the warranty is up. Things like loosing Air Conditioning, electrical problems, paint lifting off of the body and other things that happened to their cars that cost a-plenty.
If they want customers back, and back to stay,forget about the 60 day deal, forget about lifetime power warranties like Chrysler, guaranty that no repair will cost over $100 for as long as you own the car from new, for the first 100,000 miles.
Maybe, just maybe this would force them to consider their cost engineering re: this guaranty, like Western electric had to do when the phone company had to repair their onw phones. I know many stories of engineers at GM who knew how to make components that didn't fail, only to have management want fractions of a cent out of every part, and that's what failed. They shave fractions of cents to cut the engineering to the line, then dump truckloads of money on the same part when it fails.
The competition came along and they are good at getting these things right the first time, and making a boring car that doesn't set your heart on fire with passion, but a car that will run 250,000+ miles for over a decade of ownership and not have all of the comfort systems or suspension or other item fail and cost the customer increments of $100 every time something goes wrong.
This has not been acceptible to the US buyer for a long time, and that is what GM is up against.

Well said, John. You've hit the nail head-on.

John: I live here in the North Eastern part of the United State. Over the years I have seen very few foreign makes be able to last a decade and go 250,000 miles. Cars like Toyota and other makes rust out very quickly when exposed to the chemicals used to melt snow and ice here in Penna.

Give you a good example bought an 1981 Toyota pickup used in the mid 80's. Had the truck about two years had to get rid of the truck because the frame rails rusted out. No problems like that with the Chevy and Ford pickups I have had over the years.

The Japanese have built their share of junk over the years but always seem to have managed to get a free pass.


John F. Shireman

I would agree that Toyota products were prone to rust in the '80s, but newer products are exceptional. I have had a '92 Lexus that I got 165,000 miles on before being taken out by a semi and my current 2001 Lexus has 220,000 and still running like a top. Neither of them had any rust. I live in Wisconsin so you know I have seen my share of snow.

GM has been in trouble since 1980 when it started with bean counter R.Smith. NOW, they have some joker from Telephone ??? LAI is not my favorite Auto executive and he's a big bag of wind but at least he had some Automotive background and apparently somekind of pull in Washington.

WCF is no doubt a good Company man. Not sure about F's future but i'm sure F has future.

My guess is that Motors Liquidation will somehow come out of all of this owning the NEW GM too and perhaps become somekind of Domestic automotive marshaling agancy or so-called automotive Czar in corporate clothing rather than a single man appointee to such a position.

An auto company is not a bank, grocery store or brokerage outfit. It's a highly complex bussiness, technical and DRIVES trends. NOT driven by trend. NO other bussiness meets the auto worlds complexity nor impact it has on civilation.

IT takes a real man at the top to run an auto company. Bean counters, refrigerator salesmen, Harvard shitheads and directory assistance operators arn't going to cut it.

John, I completely agree with you about the Japanese cars of the early 1980s, they were only slightly better than the Japanese cars of the 1970s, which rusted out so quickly and so badly that it made the crap coming out of GM, Ford and Chrysler look good, which is saying a lot.
I think they have had that situation licked for over 20 years, the Japanese, Korean other domestically produced Asian brands I see around the Detroit area are holding up pretty good, as are many domestics. Gawd, remember the early 70s? Those Ford LTDs that started growing huge rust spots on the sides, the after six years the outer body skin started six inches higher than when new, a jagged edged tetanus shot looking for a place to happen. Other brands were not immune then. Ford sure had a problem with the rockers on the Aerostar vans in the 90s, as a matter of fact, things have improved so much that seeing something like that really stands out. The Detroit area is the ultimate test, we are sitting on top of the biggest container of salt the world knows, the Detroit salt mines. I snows heavily most winters and the city dumps liberal amounts of the car-killing stuff on the roads every snowfall. It's sort of like the air force and jet fuel, if they don't use their quota one year the amount is cut back so they make sure to dump lots--Packard V8 will back me up on this.
The Asian brands I see hold up as well or better than the domestics these days, and have for quite a while.

Which brings me to another point: Dealerships.

The local dealer is the perception of GM (Ford and Chrysler) , not the gleaming cylindrical glass tower on Jefferson avenue, not the Warren Technical center, not the many factories that produce the cars, but the dealer.
A lot of dealers, in my observance are dysfunctional family businesses, they seem to exsist to feed the owner's expensive hobby (cars, boats,planes,art, whatever)and desired lifestyle and to give all the ner-do-wells in the family (and a few hot girls for recreational purposes) employment. It has been easy for the company to say "well, they are an independent business and we have little or no control over what happens there"
Well, it's time you figured out what is happening there and do something to rein it in. Get some secret buyers out there to do test purchases in each dealership, meter every aspect of the transaction and treatment.
Brock Yates summarized it perfectly in his 1981 book, "The Decline and Fall of the American Auto Industry"
He bottom lined it like this: The executives of the three domestic companies are given cars by the company, these cars are inspected in minute detail by a staff of the best trained, best equipped mechanics in special garages reserved just for executive cars. Should there be any problem the car is whisked away to these top-drawer mechanics and fixed promptly.
This stands in such sharp contrast to how you and I are handled in the same scenario, and serves to isolate those who make decisions that affect the quality and reliability of their products such that this perk should be eliminated.
The new top men at GM and Chrysler (and Ford, even though they are not at the public trough) should have to go through a dealer to get their cars and service the way we do. They will have "their people" do the work of it, they are, after all busy people. But they will get to the heart of the matter quickly. The dealer situation for many is broken and it is time to fix it.

As far as Lee Iacocca goes, he had the guts to fight, and fight hard for a company he had little history with, but he believed in the future of, and he was successful.
First and foremost, he was product-driven. He knew to focus from the front office down on building product that people wanted. That ability to know, and to be able to predict is not taught in accounting,law or engineering school. I think it works best to have a super salesman at the helm, who listens to the other VPs and enables them to do the best for the company.

Quite: :

"Japanese cars of the early 1980s, they were only slightly better than the Japanese cars of the 1970s, which rusted out so quickly and so badly that it made the crap coming out of GM, Ford and Chrysler look good, which is saying a lot."

True. But the japanese auto invasion SUCCEEDED!! The ONLY reason it succeeded was due to the synthesised 'fuel crisis' of 1970's era. Had gas prices remained in the some reasonable range and no shortages then the Japanaeese car market would have had little more success than the EC markets started some 20 years earlier. And to this day, we would still be driving huge Buicks, picups, SUV's and cars of the trend and style of 1955 thru 1975.

On a more general note. With the massive loss of industrial type jobs, all the way from CEO down to floor sweeper, I'm guessing that John Q American will be fortunate to be able to afford so much as a brown paper bag to take a shit in over the next 3-8 years. Let alone a car.

As for going OUTSIDE of the auto industry for top decision makers I would think that there are some good candidates. One that comes to mind is Charles Schwab. Maybe a few others. But still, it's an industry that has fallen a great deal in part to a lack of leaders with automotive specific background.