Kill the Messenger - this time the LA Times

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The Wall Street Journal writes an article about GM. It's only common knowledge. GM takes revenge when they don't like what a reporter writes. From the Wall Street Journal of 8 April 2005

As GM has struggled to stop losing market share in the US, executives there have stepped up the volume of their complaints about negative press. ... In a Wednesday column, Los Angeles Times auto writer Dan Neil sharply criticized GM for what he said were a series of poor management decisions.
"An American idle" in the LA Times of 6 April 2005

"GM is a morass of a business case, but one thing seems clear enough, and Lutz's mistake was to state the obvious and then recant: The company's multiplicity of divisions and models is turning into a circular firing squad" ...

There is some precedent for such harsh action among auto advertisers. Ford Motor Co yanked ads from the New Yorker magazine when the magazine failed to alert it about a Jun 1995 article containing a four letter word. In response, the New Yorker set up a formal system to warn about 50 companies on a "sensitive advertiser list" about articles that might offend.

In 1954, GM threatened to cancel its advertising in The Wall Street Journal, and not speak to its reporters, if the Journal published a story revealing the next year's cars. During the 1950s and '60s, the Journal put enough money into liquid assets that it would be able to keep publishing even if five big advertisers withdrew.

As a result, WSJ reporters such as Maryann Keller ("Rude Awakening") were reporting more honestly about GMs product problems.

Honesty is not GM. Example: new Pontiac G6 that GM promoted by giving away on Oprah. Lutz inherited this car and another pathetic product - Buick Lacrosse - when he arrived. Other pathetic designs include the Saturn L series that was forced upon Saturn by corporate bean counters. These are products of a #1 problem in GM - Rick Wagoner. But then let's do the numbers - which GM fears to put on their window stickers. 200 horsepower from a 3.5 liter V-6 is a paltry and low performance 57 horse power per liter. Well at least that is an improvement over their 52 HP per liter cars of the last ten years. 70 HP/liter was standard performance more than 10 years ago. A technology that GM was ready to put into all vehicles in 1975 - more than 25 years ago - if car guys (not bean counters) were permitted to design.

Why put the 70 Hp/liter in cars when so many Americans are so anti-American as to buy cars that must have two extra pistons (and less gas mileage). Those higher prices? Blame the unions.

Two years ago, (July 2003?), the New York Times wrote a scathing review of another pathetic GM product - the Pontiac Grand Prix. Maybe because Pontiac was replacing this product with the G6, then it was safe for the NY Times to report facts. The Grand Prix was called pathetic. Rick Wagoner could not be blamed for that so called 'Wide Track' car. BTW wide track means it is the same width as identical models sold in Buick and Chevy. Wide track is an expression for those who like to be lied to. Pontiacs are only wider in their exaggeration.

Rick Wagoner was head of GMs North American operation when, in February 2000, he was in competition with the European head of operations to succeed Jack Smith. North American operations were losing money while the European operations (Vauxhall and Opel) were providing GM with up to $1billion in profits annually. And so GM promoted the man whose operations lost money every year (North America) rather than promote a man who provided profitable products (Europe). Now that Wagoner is top boss, both operations are losing money heavily. No wonder GM management is blaming everyone except themselves. GM bonds somehow managed to stay out of junk status this week. GM wants the press to spin facts for them. Don't tell the truth about how bad GM products really are - especially their low performance, higher polluting, and lower gas mileage engines. Ignore that $100 million provided by the government in 1993 to develop hybrid products ... that GM still does not sell more than 10 years later. Never attack GM management. They are even more important than the product line. The emperor has no cloths. Fix the problem. Muzzle the press.

This month is the Consumer Reports April car issue. Consumer Reports (not to be confused with Consumers Digest) has a long history of being honest. Why? GM cannot use its advertising budget to take revenge. One famous CR article was entitled "Oldsmobile Achieva is an under achiever". An understatement. But CR can be honest. GM is depicting the LA Times to threaten the news media - because GM products are that bad due to Rick Wagoner.

Dan Neil's LA Times article is not that negative. But it identifies a problem in GM - Rick Wagoner. Not permitted.

It was Lutz, after all, who candidly averred at a Morgan Stanley meeting last month that GM might have to phase out some of its product lines, even using the word "damaged" to describe Pontiac and Buick.

GM utterly missed the boat on hybrid gas-electric technology and lobbied Congress not to raise fuel-economy standards on the grounds that meeting higher standards would divert funds from critical research in the ultimate propulsion technology, hydrogen fuel cells - an argument that, shall we say, lacks authenticity. Today, GM has no hybrids of consequence on the street, while rivals Toyota and Honda are selling as many as they can build.

Responsible technical publications from the IEEE to Scientific American noted that hydrogen as a fuel is not realistic. Better still - it was a lie once you did simple engineering numbers. Not enough energy in a hydrogen fuel. Too much energy lost to store and distribute it.

Hybrids were long known by the technically informed as a viable solution. But GMs top management had to understand simple numbers for BTUs in fuel, pounds per square inch, leakage rates, thermodynamic concepts, ... All things known to an executive who can provide a strategic objective - a product oriented thinker. Ask current GM management to provide the strategic objective? Not possible when bean counters design the products. Currently GM has pathetic products as one should expect from a bean counter - who could not even run a profitable North American operation.

BTW what were Rick Wagoner's previous jobs? Finance.

Signs in GM a decade ago spelled the word "employe". Why? This is how Roger Smith spelled the word in his memos. Therefore all signs in all GM plants were changed to spell the word as Smith insisted. Dan Quayle? Anyone remember how to spell "potatoe"? Immediately after Roger Smith left GM, all signs were immediately changed to spell it correctly: "employee". That is GM. The boss - not the product - is important. A principle promoted by business school management. A problem so deeply embedded in GM's bad management that Rick Wagoner decided to take personal control of jobs by both Cowger and Lutz. A management so deeply entrenched that the head of one few profitable GM operations in China quit when a new boss moved to Shanghai to better 'oversee' operations there.

Rick Wagoner's history was losses when he was boss of GM's North American operations. How do GM managers get their jobs? Clearly not on designing better products or reporting profits. Get Americans to foolishly buy GM products and lies. Better to get news services to spin half truths - so a naive 23% will continue to buy classically anti-American GM products.

They vote to save Rick Wagoner's job. They buy low performance, gas guzzling, pathetic vehicles that cannot be exported and still don't have technology that GM was ready to market in 1975 - 25+ years ago. Technology now found in all patriotic products since 1992. And that was the standard technology before hybrids. Let’s see. No 70 Horsepower per liter engine in the Pontiac G6 or Buick Lacrosse. No hybrids in any models. Who would be so foolish as to buy products from this company?