NeilBlanchard -
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Hi,
I think that the root of GM's problem (and much of the rest of the auto industry) is they got into the financing of auto loans, and then they built cars to be obsolescent and pushed "new" models every year; that had zero functional changes.
They also had umpteen divisions that each tried to carve out a market niche -- what was the real difference between Chevy and Pontiac and Buick and Oldsmobile and Cadillac and GMC and Saturn and Saab ... They had more than 125 different models -- gimme a break!
Cars should be built to last, and designed to function well, and changes should only be made when they are needed to improve the function. Yearly changes are stupid.
Saturn had the single best idea to come out of GM, that has been taken up by Scion: no price negotiation and ŕ la carte options.
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Yes. All the different nameplates were separate car companies at one time.
I wish I had the article in front of me, maybe someone else posted it. Before the gas crunch, the GM divisions "competed" against each other as autonomous entities. When they tried to consolidate in the 1980s, they did it backwards. The different divisions offered very similar external designs with very different internal drivetrains. Instead they should have offered near-identical drivetrains with external style differentiation. This would have saved a lot of $ and allowed them to perfect the drivetrains for reliability.
Because of internal politics within GM, Saturn withered on the vine after the S-Series, which was basically the same car for 12 years. Saturn was quietly "Oldsmobiled" and ceased to exist in the early 2000's.
CarloSW2