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Originally Posted by markweatherill
It looks like GM suddenly started pulling apart Japanese and European cars to find out what the last several decades of development have yielded! And then only because they are forced to.
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All U.S. car makers have been 'benchmarking' foreign cars for 25-years or so.They buy some of the competition and study everything about them,then integrate what the bean-counters will allow after committee meetings and consumer clinics.It works the other way too!
When I was at the Chrysler Proving Grounds in 1991 they had a sampling of foreign cars inside.
GM doesn't innovate.It's their corporate policy not to.They are risk-adverse.They will copy,when they feel a need.Alfred P.Sloan,Jr. does a fine job of explaining in his book about when he ran GM.And competition is fierce within some market segments.Platform and component sharing among GM marques globally,allow R&D and tooling expenses to be recouped at little expense per unit,allowing many features to be offered at little additional cost.
They're in business to make money for their shareholders,they just happen to make cars to do that.They have a legal,fiduciary responsibility to do so.
Sylvester Stallone essentially shi- on GM's 100-mpg Ultralite in "Demolition Man",going to great trouble to secure a 60s GM 'muscle car' for his movie heroics.The market is still kinda locked into that paradigm.
Those 100-mpg cars are waiting in the wings.It's up to the market to decide when and if they'll ever be produced.