The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 15)

1. I bought a Chevy Cobalt for my daughter during the employee pricing sale. It really is an excellent little car. Not anywhere near as poorly built as Chevy's used to be in the '70s and '80s. GM really does make better cars than they used to.

2. I was stationed in the Detroit area from 2000 to 2004. Many of the reservists I managed worked in the auto industry. I learned a lot about the business from talking to auto industry executives. Information I gleaned was that they were all very concerned about improving product quality and cutting material costs, particularly by playing hardball with their suppliers. There was no interest whatsoever in taking on the unions or cutting labor costs. It seems they'd given up on that battle long ago or that it was such an intractable problem they didn't want to discuss it. On the other hand, it's possible the Board of Directors at GM has simply become too ossified to deal with the crisis they now have on their hands. This ossification problem is a common disease in large, established companies. Many a management book and MBA program has addressed it. Looks like it's GM's turn in the barrel.

3. From a marketing perspective, it seems GM is holding on to some obsolete concepts about their customers. GM in particular still believes in the "start 'em young by selling them a Chevrolet and move 'em up through Pontiac, Buick, and finally Cadillac, (as they grow older)." I have never met anyone who actually followed this buying pattern, other than possibly GM employees. It is part of the marketing delusion they suffer from and which is perpetuating the multiplicity of competing divisions your article refers to.

4. GM's financing department has been a bigger source of revenue than their manufacturing process for many years and has been masking the profitability problems they've been having in selling cars for a long time. But the loss of market share has now caught up with them and financing can no longer cover the losses.

p>Bottom line is GM must fix all the problems you describe AND bust the unions if they plan to survive. I don't think current management is up to it (and neither does the stock market). br> -- Paul Doolittle /p> p> I agree that GM has too many different models and it affects far more than the competition: it affects quality as well. We succumbed to the Employee Pricing and bought a Suburban (we also bought some energy sector mutual funds to break even). While we love that truck, since July we have taken it in for the air conditioner, the heater, the back door gasket, the back seat, and now the driver's seat memory doesn't work. My Acura, on the other hand...aaahhhhh, my Acura. I'm just praying that if there is something major league wrong with the truck it shows up within the warranty. I realize that GM's plight is more complicated than the quality of my truck, but if they can't make a decent car, solving their benefits problems won't put them in the black. br> -- Andrew Macfadyen br> Omaha, Nebraska /p>

Now I have no expertise in the automotive industry except that I have been owning and driving automobiles for a couple of ticks over 50 years. Nevertheless, I would like to agree in part and disagree in part with Mr. Peters.

Yes, GM could well reduce the number of cars/models. I well remember the time when ALL GMC brand vehicles were trucks. Last year at the Barrett-Jackson Collectable Car Auction, a 1954 Olds F-88 2-seater convertible concept car sold for $3 million. This year the Pontiac equivalent will be hammered down. The vehicles were designed and built by the legendary Harley Earle. My point being that even GM realized that they did not need a Corvette type car in each of their lines.

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