Bailout Watch 261: GM's Mea Culpa
Published: December 7th, 2008
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From GM’s ad in Automotive News (Dec 8 edition):
“While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry. We have paid dearly for these decisions, learned from them and are working hard to correct them by restructuring our U.S. business to be viable for the long term.”
More by Robert Farago
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Day late. Dollar short.
GM is making the same mistake again by concentrating all there Tech knowledge on the "Volt" whereas they should be getting into a proper Hybrid small Vehicle as well as plain old Gasoline engines in small vehicles, they will never learn!
dgduris: It isn't about being "green" enough. It the mis management of funds spent in producing and promoting 4 mediocre versions of the same thing for every division time and time again, moronic tie ups with companies like Fiat and mindlessly putting all GM's eggs into one basket. The whole "green" thing is in reference to the "GM's killed Kenny, the electric car" claims and how little it would have cost to have grabbed a PR brass ring. Especially when GM comes begging to US taxpayers so that by 2012 50% of their entire line will be flex fuel capable according to their own "recovery plan". [ I incorrectly said 100%] Spending money on losers like Saab and Saturn , the Fiat tie up, the Subaru tie up, and selling their JVs with other companies at a loss: that makes shareholders "happy" ? For all the flames thrown at Daewoo, it was probably the smartest long term stock holder pleasing investment GM made in the last 10 years. [Note: I said "long term", something GM hasn't considered until bankruptcy stared them in the face and "free" money to be had ]. Yes their SUVs were cash cows, but the signs of that market softening were apparent as early as 2002. It would have taken leadership to make sure that attention was being paid to other areas of their product portfolio besides SUVs, but pull those GMT900s forward. Waggy's mismanagement is the point and he's taken them down a long road year after year. The "green" thing would have been easy to grab low hanging fruit. Instead, once again Toyota wins the PR war.