But this isn’t about overlapping or about rebadging. I think those are bad, but even if they aren’t…

It’s about Bob Lutz lying regularly. He comes out and says “No X” and then GM does X. Many times over.

These sun-deprived, tie-wearing, pinched-faced old dudes have been out of touch for 20 years, and they’re buying the screed their Marketers are feeding them like it was Matsushita stock at a Dollar Days sale.

I totally agree with the opening of your post, but have a comment when it comes to “they’re buying the screen their Marketers are feeding them…”

No such thing, I know from personal experience. When you tell GM top managers that their “rational” decisions on their brands are killing them, you are told to go chew some wallpaper and get lost.
It’s GM telling their marketers, not the other way around.

Thought my fellow best & brightest might be interested.

“Private sector policy of insolvency: look no further than GM (General motors) for years now they have made cars and LOST an average of 2000 dollars upon them, and actually they only made money on the financing of them. They maintain jobs banks where employees are given FULL pay to stay home and not work. GM in one form or another has 390 BILLION dollars of bonds outstanding. THEY ARE TECHNICALLY INSOLVENT.”

I did, as well as the Solstice. The GM twins have better and certainly more macho styling, about equal handling(better with the race suspension packages), and more torque… bottom line being that they are good toys, but the Miata is a superior car(IMO of course).

But, they shouldn’t be. As Katie pointed out, in the old days, each dealer sold his marque. GM needs to get back to that. Some marques don’t get an econobox. Some don’t get a PU.

A BPG dealer sells vehicles in enough segments that they should be able to make a comfortable living w/o an Aveo clone.

When BPG combined I was hopefull that badge engineering was over. But I see no evidence of it. This is one reason I’m sceptical of the Chevy/Caddy concept of a future GM. What makes anyone think GM can keep Chevy and Caddy separate? They’d soon have model and price overlaps. They’d end up with a low end Chevy, a high end Caddy, and a bunch of indistinct Chevillacs in between.

It’s a pitty GM can’t make distinctions between marques (I won’t say they have brands, because brands stand for something) When I see people buying Acura I get the impression there is a market for near lux. When I see people buying Mazdas I get the impression there is a market for sporty/performance oriented transportation. There are market niches to be filled by well defined brands, but GM just doesnt get the idea.

The Torrent, Acadia and G5 really go against the plan. And Buick needs to stop selling vehicles for less than $28K out the door, no matter what that does to volumes.

You misunderstand the point of PBG a bit. A PBG dealer is a full line dealer. They need to have everything that a Chevy dealers has. They are Chevy Part Deux, just slightly more upscale. Very slightly. Hence, the G5. Now, the other two you mentioned are true overlaps, but Pontiac needs a small car, because PBG dealers need a small car to sell.

If the G5 didn’t exist, can you imagine the screaming from PBG dealers at GM Corporate right now, now that small cars are hot?

Now, Buick will never have more than 3 models ever again-but they are probably going to stick with the three they currently have. The Torrent will be dropped when the Equinox is redesigned. Looks like the Acadia might be as well. But Pontiac will have a complete line up of cars, including a compact car. GMC will have a complete line up of trucks and SUVs. And a PBG dealer will have a complete line up of everything.

It’s like watching a painter paint himself into a corner, even after he passes opportunity after opportunity to leave an exit for himself. Now that he’s gotten himself boxed in, he’ll have to wait for the paint to dry….if the fumes don’t take him out first.

There’s really no way to consolidate the slated-to-be-killed-off marques without dealers flexing their own muscles. After the loss of Oldsmobile, they’re not so willing to take another brand phase-out on the chin. Otherwise, I would love to see GM pared down to Chevy, Caddy and GMC.

There’s really no way to shrug off the union and pension hell they’ve created for themselves without bankruptcy proceedings. And even then that might not work.

There’s really no way for the company to put out great product at the right time with no compromises thanks to the management and the overall culture that permeates GM.

So in short, there’s really no where but in the grave for GM to go…and it’s got one foot deeply sunk in it. It might be Chrysler that takes the plunge first, but GM wont be far behind.

1) Create Saturn to compete in the small car market.
2) Kill Oldsmobile.
3) Gain half decent reputation with S-series Saturn.
4) Replace S-series with garbage (ION) and make
Saturn into another bloated division (Like Oldsmobile).
5) Buy Daewoo to sell another car to “compete” in the small car market (See item 1).
6) Create Hummer division to sell supersized Suburbans.

Makes sense 2 me.

These sun-deprived, tie-wearing, pinched-faced old dudes have been out of touch for 20 years, and they’re buying the screed their Marketers are feeding them like it was Matsushita stock at a Dollar Days sale.

If Pontiac is their ‘performance’ division, then all Ponitacs should have sport-tuned suspensions, more power, and available manual transmissions. They can develop joint platforms to save development costs, but I shouldn’t be able to tell that they have done so when I am sitting behind the wheel.

The last time I compared GM products (about 15 years ago), they were all identical aside from their sheet metal.

There fixed it for you Lutz, you haven’t earned the right to make it past tense especially since it looks like you guys are becoming more stupid. What a branding mess.

Perfect shot.

Kudos.

Bunter

Ha, yes they will. And since the morons decided not to have a Chevy El Camino redux with this thing instead (the only “badge engineering” that would make sense for GM right now) you will hear Chevy dealers, and the Old (getting Older) Guard of nostalgists pressure GM for an El Camino.

GM, if it survives long enough, will acquiesce and we will then have an El Camino competing witht the G…G-what are they gonna call this thing? Even now people look at a half-car and a half-truck and they think “El Camino,” with “Ranchero” coming in a distant second.

So what is Pontiac to call this thing? They seem kinda G’eed out…G-8-Truck? G-Kinda Truck? How about G-Sorta Car? I wonder…

Is GM’s management there yet?

PS
For 26theone;
A Car Czar is an executive given great sweeping powers, usually to correct a serious problem, and is often parachuted in to the organization from outside.
Maximum Bob for many reasons, including that no exaggeration is too great for Mr. Lutz. – See Lutzism.

GM’s dealer network is actually fairly powerful and very, very shortsighted. They want a vehicle to sell to every customer, but they don’t want to have to compete–directly–with another GM dealer in the same locality.

Put it this way: if a Pontiac dealer feels he/she is losing econocar sales to Chevy, they’ll demand a version of the Aveo, optioned ever so slightly differently than the Aveo, so that they have a product to sell but can’t be exactly compared.

GM will maintain this artificial duopoly for two reasons:
* They have to keep building cars. GM’s gross size and stupid labour contracts result in their making little (or losing a bit) of money on every car sold. If they don’t make anything, though, it hurts much more. They’re like a shark: they have to eat to survive, long-term; but they have to swim to survive right now. So they’re slowly starving to death.
* In some jurisdictions, franchisees can sue on the grounds that GM is doing them a disservice by starving them of product.

GM should have started efforts to cull dealers ten-plus years ago. As part of that, though, they would have had the management wisdom to address their operational restrictions so that there weren’t obliged by contract or cash-flow to push metal.

Of course, this would have required GM’s management to, well, show some backbone and actually take the risks. Instead, they stayed the course. Remember, to an certain type of accountant, risks are bad. One must avoid risks until it’s otherwise impossible to do so.