This American Life episode on the closing of NUMMI
 

One of the most recent episodes of This American Life (available in MP3 format free from their website,) talks about the opening of the GM-Toyota NUMMI plant in California in 1984 (meant to build small cars,) and how GM singularly failed to use any of the lessons it should have learned from that experience....

NUMMI | This American Life

Every once in a while I'm tempted with the idea of replacing my wife's Pontiac with the Chevy Volt, but stories like this remind me that the company is singularly undeserving of any more of my money....

...you have *a* Pontiac?

...we've got TWO of them, both Vibes, a 2004 and a 2009. Very nice cars.

...but, in reality, they're really just Toyota Matrix's wearing GM Pontiac logos!

jkp1187 -

I am so sad for NUMMI. The story reinforces my perception that the foreign/domestic quality gap is much closer today than in the past. It makes me wonder if GM could have avoided bankruptcy in 2008 if it's portfolio didn't have so many gas-guzzlers.

CarloSW2

The gas guzzling SUVs were high margin and probably kept the company alive for longer than it should have lasted. The undoing of GM was its decades of poor quality. (Seriously, listen to the show. Hearing the workers describe the kind of crap work that went into those cars...)

Clev -

Oh yeah, just like Old Mech has said. The show also said that by the 2000's, the "NUMMI Generation" (managers that had learned from NUMMI) had the critical mass they needed to change at least parts of the company, but it was too late.

CarloSW2

Yes, well we have a distinctly non-NUMMI Pontiac G6....

What does NUMMI stand for?

ton -

New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

Welcome to NUMMI.com
http://www.nummi.com/images/nummi_img_20yrs.jpg

CarloSW2

My '99 Metro was assembled at CAMI, one of GM's other joint manufacturing ventures, in Ingersoll, Ontario.

Some of the last manufacturing jobs in the bay area gone forever. I swear everybody around here is a god damn paper pusher.