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Automotive News & Views What if you were in charge of GM?
874 messages, Last post on Oct 28, 2009 at 10:20 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
I would start planning for war production. 
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Replying to: euphonium (Nov 03, 2008 9:49 am) |
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Replying to: ehaase (Nov 02, 2008 8:00 am) I do see someone buying the whole corvette production line, and perhaps viper as well.
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Replying to: nwng (Nov 03, 2008 1:05 pm) Well, if I had to start over and could only keep a few vehicles what would they be? Here's what I'd pick: Buick Lucerne/Cadillac DTS Cadillac CTS Chevrolet Corvette Chevrolet Impala Chevrolet Malibu Chevrolet Silverado Pontiac G8 The Lucerne/DTS and Impala would only be kept around on a temporary basis until I could come up with something better. Everything else would be tossed either for good or for fresh new designs. I would not want to see the Corvette production line bought up by some outsider because I would not want to see any abominations cobbled together from Corvette parts and various others like some of those Avanti cars that have come and gone over the decades since Studebaker's demise.
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Replying to: lemko (Nov 03, 2008 6:50 am) |
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Replying to: lemko (Nov 03, 2008 1:24 pm) As for your example, is rwd with a big honking V8 selling? You got 3 fwd sedans with v6 engines, shouldn't the resource be better utilize on only ONE of them? GM builds the best full size trucks. If they can beat toyota in NA, why not improve on it's small trucks and beat them in the world market? |
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dump Saturn (should sell for some bucks) dump Saab (ditto) dump Hummer (already in the works?) kill GMC change Buick just to include a G8 GT badged as a Grand National and a new Lucerne (can Lucerne have a better name pleeease?) based on a Cadillac platform, tuned for comfort leverage Daewoo Asia and Opel to the hilt and use them to fill the Pontiac line, kill EVERYTHING Pontiac today except the Solstice - give it a lineup of fun, small to midsize, genuinely fuel-efficient cars, including a 4-seat 2-door sport coupe using the new 1.4 turbo and a shortened Corvette platform using more conventional materials to keep price down. Chevy takes on an extra trim level or two in the truck line to cover the lost GMCs, and takes on the Vibe which should have been a Chevy in the first place (not especially sporty as Pontiacs are supposed to be, and cheapish in its lowest trims). I will echo the calls to kill this stupid Cruz name in favor of just keeping Cobalt, and to reintroduce a super-cheap Aveo trim to keep entry price extra low for those that need transport, not perks. Cadillac: this is the only brand where I think GM has managed really well since 2000, and I like the existing plans for its future, with the exception of the Escalade - it needs to go, it's ridiculous, and too vulnerable to gas price spikes as this year proves all too well. What's more, it cheapens the Cadillac brand by its existence. I do think they could do a good job of selling the "BLS" in America and grabbing some more buyers, and they could use a high-quality compact to complete the lineup. Will GM get the chance to do any of this? Probably not. So while my response above addresses the spirit of the original question posed, I think more realistically what I would do is hide the company cash somewhere convenient and take the North American divisions straight to bankruptcy court. I can appreciate that it might have a big impact on sales in the short term, but they would eventually reorganize and the resulting company would be sooo much more competitive on a global scale. |
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I see at least one columnist at Automotive News had an idea I already had in my mind before, so I will say it out loud here: GM ought to sell Buick to SAIC in China. That is their automotive partner over there that is already single-handedly responsible for Buick's huge surge in popularity there, as well as for the new Riviera concept everyone loved so much. GM makes some cash and has one less needless brand to worry about, and maybe Chinese Buicks still get sold in the States in future. Win win? If GM expanded the Cadillac line to include the BLS and a new Deville worthy of the (new) Cadillac name, they wouldn't lose any money just eliminating Buick from the NA market anyway.
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Replying to: nippononly (Nov 03, 2008 8:56 pm) Wouldn't they have to buyout all the Buick dealers? I think GM would be better off financially to drop most of the Buick models, and make the 1 left a "dog" so that Buick dealers willingly quit the business. But that's a moot point as GM is quickly bleeding to death. Looking at their latest Red Tag Sale prices, I don't see those as helping their sales at all. It's the same old small discounts off MSRP, and an MSRP that's higher than last year (!). Sales are going to be down 40% for a while, and they're going to be losing $2B+/month. |
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All this talk of sell,sell,sell, is a bit premature and may be an overreaction. A few years back, there was a phony e-mail floating around that had GM allowing all the rights to Olds to lapse, and that Toyota was picking it up, and was going to sell "Oldsmobiles", using names like cutlass and 88 and the old, familiar red Rocket emblem. Needless to say, that caused an uproar. Now, picture GM selling Saturn to say Fiat, and Buick to SAIC. Fiat turns Saturn into a winner by selling Fiats as Americanized Saturns, and 10 years from now, SAIC brings Buick back to the US. In the short term GM may have benefitted from a cash infusion, but long term, it may bite them in the rear. A better idea may be to kill them, as you can always bring them backif the situation calls for it, but the BEST idea is to just build cars for those brands that people want. |
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