Why not remove any duplicate entries in the GM lineup and then sell them ALL under one roof?

The G8 is different from any other North American GM vehicle so we keep it. Ditto on the G6. However the G5 is just a Cobalt so kill it off. Maybe folks would like the different trim packages of the Cobalt and G5 and they could sell them side by side, admitting they are the same car with different trim packages. Keep the Saturns but kill off that big snout minivan that all the divisions sell. Sell it only as a Chevy.

Then the consumer could walk onto a lot and see 35 different products and choose from that. There are real choices to be had. Not this big long confusing product catalogs that the average consumer barely understands.

They would see a big shiny GM logo on the sign with all the division names listed under the logo on the pole. The facade of the building would repeat those name all around the front. GM could quit the divide and conquer business model. People would go to the GM dealer to see all the choices and discover models they did not know existed. The better dealers would survive. The crummier dealers would sucum. I mean if they kill of GMAC and Pontiac a whole lotta dealers are going to die anyhow…

I suspect though that GM will have to declare bankruptcy to really change their business model – shed the UAW, shed all sorts of legacy contracts and benefits, shed all sorts of franchise agreements… Then they reorganize and come back a fighter which can make money on cars big and small.

On the other hand maybe the end is near for gasoline powered vehicles thanks to technolgy and the internet (people getting the straight scoop on EVs) and they know they will have to be a much different company as well as big oil will have to change their business plan too.

Unless you really think that those hundreds of thousands of GMC buyers would, seriously, go to Ford. I’d hazard that’s a silly assumption to make.

GMC has less raison d’être than Mercury or Saturn.

GMC can change to a commercial fleet division.

Chevy is Chevy.

Saturn should just permanantly keep “rethink” as that’s what its good at. Is it the division where the cars are plastic and can survive a runaway shopping cart (but what if an 18 wheeler t-bones me?) division or the Euro GM rebadge division with a mysterious Pontiac Solstice rebadge too?

Keep Hummer happy as an aftermarket division – The pimp-my-ride division of GM.

Saab? Run them over with Hummers

Unless…you sunset Pontiac with no new product and allow the Buick and GMC dealers to merge willy nilly with Chevy and Saturn dealers.

Logically, I’d imagine it makes far more sense to sell brands like Saab and Saturn with a bundle of cash included to thank the buyer for taking the trouble. Sort of what the Benz boys did to get rid of Chrysler.

GMC would be my last choice to shut first simply because it costs almost nothing to keep alive. Saturn is the first choice as it is damn expensive to engineer and market vehicles which share not a single piece of sheetmetal with any other GM vehicles. Next up, kill Pontiac.

If the goal is to get to just Chevy and Cadillac right away then I’m on board. But if only one brand must go, GMC is a dumb place to start.

Then again, what does GM’s board of directors really understand about managing a car company? They keep telling us what a great guy Rick is!

How they can get that past the franchises I can’t see. Even with rationalization the dealer network isn’t shrinking fast enough. Probably this is just a shot across the bows for the network, waitng for any dealer sitting on the fence hoping to tough it out into cutting their losses and leaving.

The fact that it costs a couple billion to shut down a brand is symptom of GMs problems, not an excuse for the execs to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic to avoid making sausage (to mix some metaphors)

My dad also bought his GMC C1500 because he preferred its styling over that of the Chevy.

Unfortunately for GM, this was 12 years ago.

IMO, HUMMER is the first, GMC (or Pontiac) is next followed by Saab, then Saturn, then Buick. This assumes of course GM doesn’t go Chapter 11 and nuke the whole works save Chevrolet and Cadillac, which is really where they need to be.

Maybe they have an anti-Chevy bias (like me). I like the GMC styling better. Not that I’ve bought one…..

GM’s biggest problem could well be they spend far too much time and effort dithering about whether to do this or that.

Sure, but is that really more than earnings ? I’m just wondering aloud. If the Chevies comply, then so do the GMCs. The dealers are already there, and they sell more GMCs than they do B/P.

My point is that if we assume that all the GMC buyers would go to their local Chevy dealer, it begs the question – why didn’t they go to their local Chevy dealer in the first place?

Another point is this – GM doesn’t need to loose revenue/profits. GMC is the number 2 division, after Chevy. Assuming it’s profitable, cutting it prior to C11, makes no sense.

As EN points out, this can’t be done outside bankruptcy because GM would have to spend all it’s “savings” on lawsuits. After bankruptcy, it makes sense.

I’d rather see GM file now and let new management make, hopefully rational, decisions about what to kill off. The fact that Saturn still exists proves that the current bozos can’t be trusted to decide anything.

That is not where the expense is. It is the overhead of maintaining the brand. Advertising, dealerships, regulatory compliance, legal, etc.