Are you serious about this inclusion???

I am. Drive a Corolla and then tell me how bad Cobalt is. The point is, Cobalt is a vast improvement over the GM compacts that came before it. And its replacement will be much better still. The rate of improvement of GM cars after 1992 was much steeper than in the 20 years before then. Further, HHR — the best way to buy a Cobalt — is a solid hit for Chevrolet, both quite numerous and it seems to please its owners nicely. Drive an SS version of the Cobalt platform in either format and you’ll see what that modest but solid platform is capable of.

Phil

Are you serious about this inclusion???

No one begrudged the occasional Jeep Wagoneer, Blazer or Bronco, but when Ford enclosed the Ranger and added a rear sear with amenities throughout, the SUV was embraced as an extrapolation of the functional and preferential factors that had started the shift to pickups in the late 1970s. Taxing gasoline to encourage a specific fleet composition in a very large and diverse country is exactly the kind of socio-economic engineering generally decried elsewhere here. There was, in fact, no need for it. You’ll notice that every vaunted foreign manufacturer sprinted in behind the D3 to sell trucks of various types, and often theirs were less efficient than GM’s, Ford’s and Chrysler’s. We didn’t get diluted Cadillacs because half of America’s vehicle-buying public preferred trucks. We got diluted Cadillacs because flatlanders in Michigan forgot what a Cadillac was. The money used to develop GM cars was enough to make them better than they sometimes were, but the car part of the operation forgot what constituted a good car, and finance professionals were hopelessly ill-equipped to fill in for them.

Far greater damage than that of cheap gas was done by GM marketing. The whole marketing engine, not just the visible elements of advertising, messaging and promotion. Vanished differentiation, abandonment of brand discipline, warranty fluctuations, stripper rentals, inability to stare down the bean counters inside, anemic creative in advertising and messaging — altogether an implosion and disintegration of everything formerly known by GM about marketing and creating and meeting desirable demand for products.

The surge in imports’ popularity was accompanied by a trend that puts the lie to gas, regulation and markets: The volume entries that ate GM’s share got steadily fatter, softer, ill-handling and fuglier until they met on their way down GM’s improved models coming up.

If GM was dead but didn’t know it in 1992, let’s try that again. After 1992, The Corvette, Cadillac as a line, Oldsmobile’s Intrigue and Aurora, and further to the Pontiac G6, the GMT900 upgrade, Cobalt/HHR and others were dramatically improved at a rate of progress sharply up from the prior 20 years.

Don’t fret the quarter-trillion dollars so much. It happens and a Tril ain’t what it used to be. It’s not all gone. A rebooted GM will be the platform for regaining some of what was lost. If Rick Wagoner’s GM is dead, fine. It needed fixing.

If the revised GM can build cars going forward as good as my current GM ride (my first), I’ll be happy to buy again.

Phil

“…is part of a larger American problem. Inability to do what needs to be done. Can you see that?”

Hooo_AAAHHH!!! Couldn’t agree more.

Just tried posting something similar to your above comment to another article here and it appears to have not passed muster. Glad to see you got the idea onto the page.

Note to whom it may concern: I do not make nor imply any criticism of TTAC editorial policy.

The DuPonts backed Wm Durant’s reacquisition of General Motors, after he lost the company to bankers and started from scratch with the Chevrolet brothers. DuPont brought in Alfred Sloan to run the company. GM’s corporate structure was based on that of the DuPont company. The business relationship benefited DuPont in two ways. They made money from the 43% of GM stock that they owned, and they made money selling GM lots of paint and plastic. The antitrust action, though, wasn’t in 1958, it was in 1948, under Truman. GM & DuPont fought it but eventually DuPont divested its shares in GM in 1961.

You make a good point that being controlled by another company made GM more accountable.

The late 1950s were significant for another reason. The UAW went on strike against GM for 4 months, driving the entire country into a recession. Since GM was making money hand over fist in the 1950s, that strike convinced the company to have labor peace at any cost.

GM main market is a cheap fuel market. So there is less pressure to make fuel efficient cars so GM is toast when the tide turns and fuel gets dear.

Try 1946: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/general-motors-death-watch-2752-the-story-so-far/

geeber, the point is that low gas prices has not only been unhelpful in general, but artificially sustained GM longer than it should have.

I’m just agreeing with Mr. Karesh. Credit where credit’s due.

The simple fact is that during the late 1970s and early 1980s, GM DID dramatically downsize its vehicles. That crappy 1985 front-wheel-drive Cadillac was the result of GM management’s strong belief that regular unleaded would hit $3 a gallon (in 1981 dollars) by 1986.

Higher gas prices would have forced GM to make more fuel-efficient cars, but not necessarily better cars, unless one concludes that fuel efficiency, in and of itself, makes a car better. This is a dubious proposition.

Plus, if gasoline prices were higher, every other manufacturer would place more emphasis on fuel efficiency, too. So GM would still be competing with the best from around the world.

For that matter, gas prices have been high in Europe for well over a generation, and Opel/Vauxhall hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire over there…

GM has been poorly run for well over 35 years. The rot was setting by the mid-1960s. It spread throughout the corporation during the 1970s and 1980s. Roger Smith, for all of his faults, tried to do something about it, but his solutions were either completely wrong, or just not enough.

Would also add that the blaming of ‘externals’ for GM’s problems started a long time ago. When it first started, it was probably an attempt to cover up/avoid any ‘bad news’ about the company in the media. But it is a slippery slope and soon ‘not our fault’ became not only a talking point for execs withthe media, but an internal mantra as well, everyone from the boardroom to the shop floor.

First it was unfair trade practices, then yen manipulation, then government regulation, then 9/11, then Hurricane Katrina, then gas prices, then ‘perceptual quality’, then the credit crunch, then Consumer Reports, then Delphi, the list goes on.

And once you convince yourselves of this, it’s easy to convince yourself that if you just keep doing what you’re doing, the sun will come up tomorrow and profits will begin soon:

2 decent products out of 50 classifies as a ‘product renaissance’, new UAW contracts that don’t cut wages or benefits for active workers are ‘revolutionary’, one Buick gets a good score in a dependability study and suddenly we are ‘on par with Japanese quality’.

We’ve heard it all in the last few years.

It’s been said here more eloquently 100 times, but the steadfast refusal to agree on the stark, unbiased reality of the situation led to the downfall.

He thought GM management was breathtakingly stupid and that its board was made of cowards. A meeting with banks and fanciers came to an agreement that a successful breakup would create great value and unleash the company’s potential. However, GM at the time had already developed powerful and sophisticated anti-takeover plans, so Goldsmith gave up before trying.

Not having adequate oversight is probably the most significant problem a large company can have. Without someone to ask the tough questions (and honestly, the current GM BoD didn’t even ask the easy ones) there’s little chance that upper management will ever consider itself capable of doing wrong.

Of course I hold GM management accountable for every mistake they made. What I’m pointing out is that GM is part of a larger American problem. Inability to do what needs to be done. Can you see that?

I’m not. The opposite. I’m blaming cheap gas for creating the SUV boom, which artificially sustained GM way beyond its expiration date. Or its possible regeneration.

I still don’t see it. GM could have made the decision to maintain competitiveness across a full line of vehicles (like Toyota did). They simply chose not to.

No one forced GM to sell the J-Car for nearly 20 years. And no one else need take responsibility for that decision.

GM Management and the UAW bear sole responsibility for this mess. They’re both acting like kids who blame Mommy and Daddy for not stopping them from doing something stupid.

I’m not. The opposite. I’m blaming cheap gas for creating the SUV boom, which artificially sustained GM way beyond its expiration date. Or its possible regeneration.

Anyone who hasn’t read DeLorean’s “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”–read it.

A retired GM exec I spoke with last week traced GM’s problems to 1958, when the U.S. government forced DuPont to sell their large stake in the company. As a result of this sale, the Board of Directors no longer had powerful independent directors.

GM and the UAW could have prevented this even without $5.00/gal gas and socialized medicine. In a sense, that sort of blaming outside forces is one of the things that led us here.

By the end of my years working for GM, to and from, I had to accept that either this company was doomed, or there was something seriously wrong with my bearings and ability to think. There is probably something wrong with the latter, but GM screwed itself by absolutely refusing to foster a necessary culture of internal criticism.

Whatever. It’s history now. As Paul writes, GM turned into a wealth and capital destroying dragon.

Remember, in those days, there wasn’t Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, VW, Jaguar, Land-Rover, Mini, Volvo, etc

There is so much competition nowadays, GM has the odds stacked against them.

Lets just move money and not produce anything in the US.

Fritz Henderson is no Alfred Sloan.

In this country, I thought we let companies that screwed themselves fail. Even big companies like GM.

The short term pain stimulates long-term stability. Or so I thought.

This is a sad day for America, but not because GM has declared bankruptcy. It’s a sad day because our government is trying to run the company post-bankruptcy.

Joe

You can use this argument, but if Japanese vehicles where crap, they still wouldn’t sell, no matter what the price. Just look at the earlier Korean vehicles. Come on, in 1980 would you rather own a Civic or a Monza? And remember, foreign cars meet the same standards US cars do. Instead of using their vast resources on side ventures, the D3 should have put it into R & D. Why is it the D3 would buy up everything during the good years and then end up selling them when times were hard? That cash should have went into making a better product.