Editorial: General Motors Death Watch 237: The Dog Ate It

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

I’ve been been having a “difference of opinion” with my step-daughter’s fifth-grade teachers. For some reason, they’ve decided to give Sasha homework deadlines and let her sort out her own schedule. Unfortunately, no one taught her self-directed, off-site time management. Not surprisingly, except for the deadline itself, Sasha’s “planner” was empty: she had no idea how long assignments would take. She couldn’t prioritize her work or organize her home life. Mind you, she had goals: finish her homework, get good grades, make it to middle school. But she didn’t have a workable plan. Remind you of anyone?

Last week, GM announced increased production for the second financial quarter. The company’s spinmeisters claimed the jump relates to models that are selling well—as opposed to the tens of thousands of vehicles choking dealer lots or waiting to choke dealer lots. In truth, in today’s moribund new car market, nothing GM builds is selling well enough to justify a 45 percent production increase. So what, pray tell, is GM’s strategy?

Who knows? GM’s “viability plan” is like Sasha’s planner: big empty spaces leading up to large, laudable goals. GM knows it has to cut labor costs, swap debt for equity and cull and/or refocus brands. It knows it has to build cars that people will buy at a price that earns the company a profit. It knows it has to return to profitability to pay back its loans. But it doesn’t have a coherent, measurable plan for how to get there from here.

Any such plan would have to ape Sasha’s new homework system, with little tick boxes for every assigned task in every subject every day of the week. If GM wants us to believe the plug-in electric/gas hybrid Chevy Volt is The One, they must give us the way-points on the road to Damascus. How much, when, leading to what profit?

RenCen would never go for it, for one simple reason: the new system would introduce accountability. It’s a concept that’s entirely antithetical to GM’s modus operandi.

And so, true to form, GM is headless chickening out. The company is running around in random patterns, trying to achieve . . . something. Anything. They’re canceling and restarting development programs. Negotiating union concessions that aren’t. Building and not building and then building vehicles. Killing but not killing brands. Asking for a $2 billion advance on its next bailout bonanza, and then withdrawing the request. Pleading for Euro-bailout bucks while talking about spin-offs.

I half expect GM CEO Rick Wagoner to slap a Yellow Zowie on his head, lean into the cameras and say, “Somebody STOP me!”

But, no. Quite the opposite. The Presidential Task Force on Autos (PTFOA) seems hell-bent on enabling GM’s cultural predisposition to throw NSFW against the wall, run back to avoid the splatter, and then see what sticks. Otherwise, the PTFOA would have joined German and Swedish ministers and demanded that GM revise their turnaround plan, instead of journeying to Motown for Volt joy rides.

In today’s Boston Globe, scribe Jake Bennett uses GM’s fabled “29” pin—an inter-executive admonition to GM suits to recapture 29 percent of U.S. market share—to make the same point: goals without careful implementation and constant, rigorous monitoring are an excellent way to completely screw up everything. Ipso bloody facto. Last time I looked, the management style practiced by Rick Wagoner’s mob had led the American automaker straight onto federal welfare.

Still, it’s worth pausing to contemplate the possibility that CEO Jack Smith’s commitment to restoring General Motors’ US market share to 29 percent (already down from over 39 percent) helped drive the automaker towards high volume, low profit fleet sales; anyone-with-a-pulse financing, ill-advised hook-ups with foreign automakers and all the other Wagoner-led fiatscos. Perhaps GM’s road to hell had a little sign on the median reminding the Powers That Be that “the ends justify the means” (right next to “Kiss Ass and Cover. The Millions You Earn Will be Your Own.”).

I’d like to know when those “29” pins fell out of fashion at RenCen. When did they give up on that company-wide goal? Did the pins hit the bin when GM’s market share fell below 25 percent? Twenty-two? Twenty? At some point in GM’s decline and fall, did someone high up in the organization actually say “Take off that stupid pin Larry”? Or was it more of a group think deal, where Rick left his “29” pin in the dresser drawer and his boys got the message? Did anyone think to replace the pins with . . . something? Something specific?

I’d like to see an actual “29” pin (jpeg to robertfarago@thetruthaboutcars.com). Was it made of bronze or lead? Has it tarnished during the last nine years? Was the number inlayed? Where was it made, the US or China? As I try to teach Sasha, if you don’t respect your work, why should anyone else?

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

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  • JK43123 JK43123 on Mar 17, 2009

    This reminds me of the article I read about Jackie Gleason. When he had his own show in the early 1950s, the script would say something like "Jackie enters stage right, does something funny." When you have talent, you know what you need to do and you can leave the plan blank and still get results. When you don't know what you are doing, leaving it blank is just leaving it blank. John

  • The Anam Cara The Anam Cara on Mar 17, 2009

    "Mind you, she had goals: finish her homework, get good grades, make it to middle school. But she didn’t have a workable plan. Remind you of anyone?" this website? i kid. i kid.

  • Ronin It's one thing to stay tried and true to loyal past customers; you'll ensure a stream of revenue from your installed base- maybe every several years or so.It's another to attract net-new customers, who are dazzled by so many other attractive offerings that have more cargo capacity than that high-floored 4-Runner bed, and are not so scrunched in scrunchy front seats.Like with the FJ Cruiser: don't bother to update it, thereby saving money while explaining customers like it that way, all the way into oblivion. Not recognizing some customers like to actually have right rear visibility in their SUVs.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
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