There will be some window dressing but nothing more than that.

A blurb in AutoNews today points out that GM needs to raise $9B over the next two years just to replace debt that’s coming due in that time.

I wrote a paper in grad school about how differentiation between the GM brands from the 1930s on was more a matter of perceptions than any actually larger differences between them. By the 1950s most of the smaller American manufacturers had gone OOB, and European cars and compacts had not yet arrived, at least not in significant numbers.

When all you have available were largish RWD three-box cars, the differences between them were more evident.

Fast food provides an analogy. Once there were only burgers, and the differences between McDonalds and Burger King seemed substantial. But add Arby’s, Taco Bell, Subway, and so forth and those burgers don’t seem so different.

GM’s failure to adapt its divisional scheme as the market’s offerings diversified in the 1960s killed their perceived differences.

The peak in GM’s market share: 1962.

Of course they probably have to beat the inauguration of the next president before the cash runs out.

No wonder the GM boys can’t simply buy their way out of American Axle’s extortion with menaces; they haven’t the money.

I guess when an extortionist sees a mark continually pay up and pay up, he figures it’s his turn next.

Except I think the mark is tapped out, or soon will be.

History is going to write some pretty poor things about the UAW, but I think even more so, about the GM management.

Because the GM management needed to grow a set each and stand up to the UAW in about 1970 when the UAW struck and put the USA into a recession.
It, along with arrogance which comes with being #1, spelled the end of GM’s dominance, because this is when the Chevrolet Vega came out and started to ruin the image of GM vehicles being “best on the market” (mind you, it was only an image – reality is often different than human perceptions, especially when marketing and billions of dollars of advertising are involved).

Interestingly enough, the Sloan GM divisional set-up started to crumble at about this time, which also helped bring about GM’s demise. For example; GENERAL MOTORS executives (bean counters all) thought that Chevrolet should build the Vega engineered at GM HQ, NOT the subcompact that Chevrolet had engineered, which was utterly conventional (after being burned by the unconventional Corvair – which was put into place at the demands of executive Ed Cole, Chevrolet chief and later GM chief).

The GM engineered Vega prototype went out onto the proving grounds and within about 2 miles, promptly broke in half at the firewall. The aluminum engine was deemed a success and suitable for 2 litres of displacement, but the beefing up of the Vega added so much weight (they couldn’t have cars breaking in half at 2 miles down the road from the dealership, after all) that they had to add 15% displacement by stroking the engine, adding to the piston speeds (exceeding the engineering paraters of the iron coated pistons sliding in silicon-aluminum cylinder block bores) and the rest is smoke-filled failure / history.

In short, GM has made their own bed and now it has become a deathbed. The only question is when, and whether it will be a Phoenix (successful Chapter 11) or simply be the biggest business failure the world has ever seen (Chapter 7 “close ‘er down boys” bankruptcy).