Why does the “I don’t know anything about cars” guy who is now
running GM (along with a 31-year-old “car czar” who also
knows nothing about cars) think GM can accelerate out of
bankruptcy while still trying to market itself through
four different brands?
Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer may be gone — but Buick, Cadillac,
GMC and Chevrolet linger, like leaves in late fall that don’t
want to acknowledge the imminent winter.
For the next few months, anyhow.
Four brands. But together, they have less total market share than
Chevrolet alone had in 1970.
Really.
Honda has two brands — the mainline Honda stuff and the Acura
luxury stuff. Toyota has three — the bread and butter Toyotas,
the luxury Lexus stuff and the “youth brand” Scion stuff (just
three cars in the latter). There is just one Subaru, just one VW,
just one Audi, just one Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo and Jaguar
and Land Rover.
No one has four brands.
But GM still thinks it needs to sell the same car three or even
four different ways. For example, several trucks and SUVs and
“crossovers” sold by Chevy are also sold by GMC (with different
trim and higher price tags) and then again (for certain models)
through Cadillac. A Chevy Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade
are all the same truck, just rouged up a bit the higher you move
down the price aisle. The Buick Enclave is the GMC
Acadia — and both of those are basically the Chevy
Traverse.
Mind you, this is after the “reorganization.”
GM will still maintain — or try to maintain — the existence of
all these makes and models even though none of the surviving
divisions or even all of them combined can approach what one
healthy GM division was selling back in 1970. Instead, GMC will
cannibalize sales (and resources) from Chevy while Buick sucks
the marrow out of Cadillac — before any of them, amid their
internecine squabbling, take note of Toyota or Honda laughing all
the way to the bank.
This is what comes of having an “I don’t know much about cars”
guy like Fritz Henderson and his post-adolescent “car czar” buddy
handling things. If President Obama believes these clowns have a
clue, he is in for a rude awakening about a year from now when
the whole rickety, half-assed structure falls in on itself and
the public demands answers and accountability.
GM does not need four brands because it hasn’t got the market
share to justify three brands. Getting rid of Pontiac
and Saturn and Hummer was a start, but a partial amputation of
the necrotic flesh is only a halfway measure. It’s time to cut
down to the stump and cauterize the wound. GM needs one line of
“bread and butter cars” — and a line of luxury cars. That’s
it. No more slotted under or just above nonsense. Your
market share does not justify it. Face that. Move on. Do it
now.
Someone said that a change of names might be the ticket — a way
to divorce GM from its attachment to a brand/maketing structure
that is as dead and irrelevant in 2009 as the corpse of Alfred P.
Sloan himself. Yes. That might be it. How about simply, “GM” —
and keep Cadillac for the high-end stuff? It’s simple, it makes
sense - it could work.
But it would take a car guy to see it.
