And what is with the marketing guy complaining that nobody knows about his products? He has the biggest marketing budget in the entire automotive industry and is admitting he can’t do his job!

“You’re fired!”

That’s Toyota’s plan.

ZoomZoom: “I’m curious, does LSD in this context stand for “Long, Slow Death?””

Why not?

I know that GM is run by idiots. But even they know that there is no remote way these can be successful. They are nothing but PR.

Transformers 2, the sequel to last year’s GM product placement lovefest, doesn’t come out for another year. Any other opportunities?

I could actually see a GMT900 Hybrid selling as the “contractors special”.

Take the 4.3L V6 combine it with a hybrid system and the ability to provide power to the job site. Offer it as a no frills $18-20k 4X2.

The unfitting industry would love it.

It could also be quite popular with government & fleet buyers who often are under mandate to purchase “green” tech.

The folks that actually need an SUV for activies other than posing will continue to by the SUV they need, with real towing capacity. A 10grand premium make ZERO sense. Even at $4.00 per gallon $10,000 large does go a very long way.

Those poser dudes that drove Tahoe and Escalades because they thought they were cool have moved on to the next “cool” thing whatever that is!

GM needs to face facts a large part of the whole SUV mustic and appeal was the “in your face, I have more than you and DONT GIVE A DAMN” image.
Looking like you are concerned about how much gas cost while you drive a 6000lb posermobile DOES NOT LOOK COOL!

Aside from mentioning the problem of “awareness” and without committing to raising “awareness,” he didn’t answer the question.

I ran across another article wherein Lutz mentioned that the upcoming Saturn Vue two-mode hybrid would add $8K to $9K to the price of the Vue.

This tech is, in the GM implementation, just too expensive to make any kind of sense at all. GM knows this and they’re just going through the motions, treading water until gas prices sink and trucks become profitable again (more LSD, Mr. Lutz?) or something else arises to save them from their own history.

I don’t think so.

The people buying conventional cars and crossovers instead of GM BAS Whybrids that the same or (in some cases) worse mileage are such obvious fools.

Like wise those that go for a large cross over (or “gasp” minivan) to get a family hauler with better mpg than a Yukahoban for less money rather than paying a $10k spiff to GM are doing it simply because they are unaware of the opportunity.

All of these folks clearly are fiscally challenged in comparison with the money management geniuses at Duh General.

Cheerio boyz,

Bunter

A lot of their problems are marketing related. The key difference is that Product Planning is part of Marketing, and it’s Product Planning that’s being flubbed more often than not.

GM can engineer a good product. That’s engineering’s responsibility and they generally have done a decent job since about ~2000 or so. Blueskying the product, giving Engineering direction, budget and scope on what to build, the price point to build to, etc is the job of Planning, and it’s those tasks that are being done badly.

All of GM’s woes (well, nearly all those that can’t be foistered on Accounting) come from Planning and/or Marketing:
* Too many brands/models in the same space with no differentiation
* Poorly-targeted vehicles (Aztek, SSR, Terraza, the GMT900 hybrids)
* Americanizing a good design (Saturn L, Malibu) or setting the quality bar too low for economy- and mainstream offerings
* Inability to sell good products
* Good products with no market, or unreasonable amounts of money thrown at a market that doesn’t exist.

GM Marketing comes off sounding like a petulant child sometimes: “No one appreciates our product”, “Customer aren’t aware… “, “Perception gap… “, etc. That’s all well and good, but collectively GM has had five to eight years of good engineering work and very little to show for it. That sounds like a failure of planning and marketing, and a corresponding failure on the part of management to provide direction to marketing.

DO NOT put your hybrid in the top of the line Durango and expect anybody to pay 50 grand for it.

Put the hybrid in your base and mid level Durango and you will have a chance to do something at the 30K price point.

Now, a tourque rich diesel would have fit these monsters much better (from a marketing and demographis standpoint).

Let’s see; hybrid buyers are generally left-leaning, environmentally concerned, somewhat–but not egregiously–affluent, and if they’re statement-seeking, the statement they want to make is a sort of pragmatic, antimaterialist one. From GM’s stable of brands, the closest to this (well, in 2000-2003) would have been Saab and Saturn.

So what does GM do? Make huge, gas-guzzling luxury hybrids that would appeal to exactly the kind of people who wouldn’t buy hybrids in the first place, while giving why-bother versions to the brands that actually _could_ move them. On average, the buyer of a GMT900 SUV wouldn’t even bother with the hybrid version, and the people who would have bought a Saab or Saturn one have already bought Priuses, Camrys and Escapes.

But no, in GM Product Planning’s mind, it has to be because they’re not shouting loudly enough and/or because the public isn’t ready. It couldn’t be a failure to understand the market, because that would mean the Product Planning was wrong, and that never happens.

GM has some good engineers, plant managers and lineworkers, completely handicapped by an inept marketing department, malicious accountants and (if they go C11) criminally irresponsible management.