Saving the US Auto Industry

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

Pontiac should have never been "saved" it should have been taken out back and shot back in the 80's. GM has been producing multiples of the same car with a different name on it for years, decades. So has Ford and Chrysler. Why is there a Mercury brand? Same answer - they should have stopped producing these same cars with different names decades ago. It was a failed business plan.

The business plan works for VW. Passat, Jetta, Bug, TT, and other VWs are the same platform.

Problem was that GM's solutions did not come from car guys. That is when all GM designs were removed from the Divisions (where division presidents protected their innovators from corporate accountants) and moved into three GM super engineering groups. BOC (Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) and CPC (Chevy Pontiac, GMC), and GM Coach and Bus.

Once the finance sheets report bad products, well, a company must go into emergency rescue as Chrysler did in 1979 (Iacocca and the K car) and Ford did in 1981 (Peterson and the Taurus).

GM did not do that when four hours from bankruptcy in 1991. Instead they shorted the pension funds and did other bean counter miracles.

Clinton realized this problem. So they offered Detroit a whole new paradigm. Government would pay for a new revolutionary design. So the government gave the auto companies hundreds of $millions to design Hybrids - Prodigy, Precept and ESX3.

And then a new administration stopped any requirements that the automakers innovation. With George Jr's arrival, all new propulsion designs and development were terminated. Even the 70 horsepower per liter engine remains quashed because no government regulation required it.

Pontiac, et al could have been saved. But that meant product people had to take charge. Instead, government in 2000 even encourages more bean counter games. That is when the demise of GM and Chrysler were inevitable.

Curiously, Ford had William Clay Ford - a car guy. Ford is viable because William Clay and Jaques Nasser are rumored to have had even two fist fights. Nasser was a bean counter all his life - starting in Australia. When William Clay replaced him in 2001, Ford started a desperate effort to save itself. As a result, Ford is viable. In serious trouble. But Ford can survive because they corrected the problem only at the very last minute - in 2001.