Admirably apt.

Time to start wondering who the survivors will be.

If there was any justice (or class) Rick and Bob would go down with the ship. But I fear there is neither.

Sad really.

Use some of the money saved to make a decent car. Put a hundred dollars more at the assembly side per vehicle and you would exceed the competition.

IN the alternate, just keep up making pointless differences, stock the same parts three times, and wonder why no one in the more desirable areas buys your cars.

I was raised on GM. We were a GM family. was.

Which is why I say that the Sloan model never worked. The instant you stay with one brand and stop moving up the chain, the other brands above you get screwed. If you buy a top-spec Pontiac because you like them, what the hell does that do for Olds and Buick? That undoubtedly led to every brand dipping into whatever they called “entry level” then, with the Buick Special and Oldsmobile 88 and others.

And as for the Escalade, the big difference though is that the SUV segment was hugely popular then. The floaty barge segment hasn’t been a big one in America for what…10, 15 years? When did the Detroit Three officially give up on the Caprice, Crown Vic and whatever Chrysler had?

Um, too late. GM has agreed to sell what is left of it’s commercial truck business to Navistar:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/navistar-buy-medium-duty-gm-truck/story.aspx?guid=%7B10EAAD0C-B259-41AD-B606-9E3863FB25BE%7D&dist=hplatest

GM already sold off it’s large heavy duty truck line to Volvo years ago (the Volvo commercial vehicles business is still owned by the original Swedish company, only Volvo cars went to Ford).

I’ve never understood why GM has been selling off it’s commercial businesses like tanks, big trucks, buses, locomotives, etc. I guess they were just selling anything they could get cash for.

On another point, Saturn was a stupid idea from the get go and is one of the few Roger Smith legacy decisions nobody has had the nerve to euthanize. GM needed to make it’s existing brands competitive with the imports, not start a whole new company within the company to try and do the job that the existing structures had to learn to do right. Just about every major strategic decision Smith made was a blunder, and most were latter undone (EDS and Hughes purchases come to mind). The Saturn money pit needs to stop.

It’s the reincarnation of the Eldo people!

Geotpf
Also, if they started shutting down lots of brands, especially the older ones with lots of dealers (namely, Buick-Pontiac-GMC) the dealer buyouts would be in the billions of dollars. While it might make things nicer, shutting down brands or reducing the number of duplicative models would cause GM’s market share to insantly drop five more points, and make them lose even more money.

I concur. The closing down brands argument is a red herring. Just make better products from top to bottom, GM!

GM needs to have overlapping brands at this point. Basically, there are quite a few people out there who will buy a GMC Sierra but not a Chevy Silverado, a Saturn Sky but not a Pontiac Solstice, a Pontiac G5 but not a Chevy Cobalt, even though each pair is basically the same damned vehicle. This allows GM to keep their assembly lines running at something resembling full-blast, and also reduces GM’s engineering and design costs. The shut down of Oldsmobile proves this; almost all of those sales evaporated, going to Honda or Toyota or BMW or Ford or who knows where, instead of going to other GM brands as predicted.

Also, if they started shutting down lots of brands, especially the older ones with lots of dealers (namely, Buick-Pontiac-GMC) the dealer buyouts would be in the billions of dollars. While it might make things nicer, shutting down brands or reducing the number of duplicative models would cause GM’s market share to insantly drop five more points, and make them lose even more money.

Now, I say Saturn is the exception here. Saturn is a giant black hole where GM’s money enters and is then never seen again. They got all-new, expanded product line, and it all bombed. They have yet to sell a thousand Astras in a month (and lose money on every one they do sell). The contrast between the slow selling Outlook and it’s red hot triplets (the GMC Acadia and Buick Enclave) is dramatic. The Aura is selling at maybe half the level of what GM expected.

The problem is that setting up a dealer network to just sell Corolla-clones was a guaranteed money loser. And, after a decade of doing that, expecting people to buy your higher-end product after everybody thinks “Corolla-clone” when they think “Saturn” is never going to work-especially since the same stuff can be bought with a “better” badge at the dealer down the street-and you can haggle at those dealers and get a discount, unlike at a Saturn dealer. No haggle pricing simply doesn’t work at price levels above 20k or so.

The Saturn dealer network is fairly small (and getting smaller), so shut down costs would be much less than trying to get rid of Buick or Pontiac. Plus, since their product is all-new, the timing is easy-just wait until that product would be due to be replaced, in three or four years, and simply don’t replace it.

Stand alone Pontiac dealerships have no trucks to offer, so GM gives them GMC franchises. That’s the rationale behind this. This also isn’t new.

GM has grouped all of these brands together for over a decade already. The news here is that they have a corporate building design they want dealerships to adopt or use, good luck with getting the old ones to invest in renovating though.

This has been the situation with Corvette for a while, now, and it seems to be working pretty well.

Like KatiePuckrik suggested, “Pontiac” becomes a tuner marque, similar to SRT/AMG/SVT/etc., and replaces V-series, Red Line, etc. GM Performance Parts becomes part of Pontiac, and from now on all of GM’s motorsports sponsorship is done under the Pontiac name. Then Pontiac really is “driving excitement”.

GMC is the odd man out and gets axed as a consumer brand. The commercial trucks might as well stay.

This way GM still has something to sell to the (few) Saturn/Buick/Saab/Hummer/Pontiac purists that still exist, but doesn’t need to maintain all the overlapping brands and models.

What brands get sold at what outlets doesn’t matter much when no one is paying attention/buying your product. Only changes at an industry leader really matter to the marketplace. Administrative changes like this are just to shave some cost out of the tree, not to improve it’s growth and the general public won’t care either way.

Why not take this opportunity to look at the the real “Deathwatch” issue at hand: cash flow? Or lack therof. Right now GM is selling down the remainder of high profit trucks, paying a ton of plant workers to sit home and watch Oprah, and they will (likely) have to pay more than they’d like to solve some of these strike issues.

Why not take a look at where their year-end marketshare will end up and what affect all the lost sales will have on their bottom line? Are the UAW close to breaking the bank? Does the Delphi money-pit plus the UAW’s demands fall on deaf ears because the well has run dry? Are some of the UAW strikes timed to help GM avoid having to pay workers to sit idle? That kind of analysis is what I’d be interested in reading.

And further, I think the Pontiac name is so damaged that people wouldn’t want to buy a Cadillac CTS Pontiac. For those people who have a mental image of Pontiac at all, it conjures up images of plastic body molding, mullets, and screaming chickens. Same with Buick—they’re bloated, plush cars with overly soft suspension. Why would I want to associate that with a brand-new Malibu, especially since Chevy already has a top trim package called LTZ?

I actually think GM’s strategy is really good..except I would put Saab with Saturn. Saturn has realtively few dealers and with Saab’s added volume you could actually have healthy, profitbale dealers selling Euro tuned FWD/AWD cars/CUVs

Cadillac/Hummer makes sense to me…bold, American, premium marques

Chevy – strong, global brand

BPG – This is harder to justify, but with the three brands combined you just need a couple of good products in each brand…Buick Enclave, Buick Invicta, Buick halo coupe, Pontiac G8, RWD alpha Pontiac G6, Solstice is a good line-up. GMC has a strong brand equity among truck buyers..take it slightly more upmarket than Chevy trucks. Maybe some exclusive products like the Denali EXt concept would help.

Sorry, but that simply isn’t correct. Ford’s Premier Automotive Group (PAG) as constructed consisted of Lincoln, Aston-Martin, Jaguar, Land-Rover and Volvo. Lincoln was pulled out in 2002 and put back with Ford (and moved it’s headquarters twice within a decade as a result). Aston-Martin was sold. Jaguar and Land Rover were just sold. The only remaining member of the “Group” is Volvo.

PAG has been dismembered piece by piece, not sold. It is now hardly a group as there is but one member remaining.

Blimey, my money would have been on the CTS….

Just get it right! At least that way we wouldn’t have to hear Farago say Cadillac should be a bunch of outdated 20-foot party boats again.

Reductio ad absurdum, eh? Well, consider the fact that the Escalade saved Caddy’s bacon. If that ain’t an outdated 20-foot party boat, I don’t know what is. OK, 18.5 feet. Close enough.

You are so right. I still think that GM could use its brands as an advantage to cater do different people, but part of me wonders if they’d be better just selling Saab and killing everything else. That’d be what…$8 or $9 billion? I mean, they’re going to alienate someone by managing a brand badly (because they don’t have enough money per brand to do it properly) or killing it. So just do it that way. Just get it right! At least that way we wouldn’t have to hear Farago say Cadillac should be a bunch of outdated 20-foot party boats again.

At this point, GM needs to eliminate badge-engineering and pare-down platform shared cousins, reducing it’s model lineup to a third of what it is today. Then, put all the brands under one roof, but provide different entrances and separate showrooms for premium marques. Franchises will have to undergo a massive rebuild, but many are long overdue for renovation.

Chevy: Malibu, Impala, Camaro; no rebadged Daewoos, no trucks. Pander to fleet sales (RWD Impala = Taxi Cab & Police Interceptor)
Pontiac: 2 rebadged Holdens, RWD
Saturn: 3 rebadged Opels (hatch, sedan, minivan)
Buick: one large sedan, FWD; one CUV (think Roadmaster).
Caddy: one gargantuan sedan, one luxury convertible, RWD
GMC: trucks!
Hummer: one ridiculous truck!!
Saab: two models (9-3 hatch/convertible and 9-5 sedan)
Corvette: on its own

That’s still a lot of models, but a company as big as GM needs volume to survive. And when I say rebadge, I mean that they’re captive imports that bear no resemblance to models from other divisions.

People on this thread truly have some great ideas. Let me add my two cents:

GMC/Hummer: Trucks only. Diesel across the lineup. No Lambda.

Cadillac: STAND ALONE dealerships. Move upscale to compete with Audi and Mercedes. Needs a new game-changing STS that starts at $50,000. CTS / STS / Escalade / Lambda CUV

Saab/Saturn: Affordable and expensive European cars. 9-1 / 9-3 / 9-5 / Corsa / Astra / Aura / Vue / Sky

Chevy/Pontiac:

Chevy = Bread and butter value-based autos. Aveo (Corsa or Agila) / Delta car / Malibu / FWD Impala / Theta CUV / Lambda CUV / Trucks / Camaro

Pontiac = All RWD/AWD. Affordable performance. Sell only G6 / G8 / Firebird / Solstice

No Buick. The market will shrink and die.

In this proposal, very little within the dealership overlaps, while pairing brands gives the customer a range of options in his or her general market preference.

Why not use some of the current brands as packages? For example:

Buy a Cadillac CTS, but you can buy a “Pontiac” sports package (for $3K, say) and beef up your car? That why the brand lives on, but its line up can be culled to help eliminate overlap. Any existing dealers can be changed over to more mainstream brands (i.e Chevrolet or Cadillac).

Here’s another example: Buy a Chevrolet Malibu (if you can find one) but pay extra to get a “Buick” luxury package?

Just a thought……