ellives

Cadillac has already done it in one generation. CTS. You could argue the Escalade took two but the first generation of it didn't count as it was just a warmed over Denali with the crest and shield added. As was said on another post Chrysler did it in one with the 300C. Again you could argue it took two with the 300 because there was the 300M before it but lets face it, the only things about those two that are really in the same family is the 300 itself. In fact I remember when I learned about the 300C, I instantly thought it was going to be a hit and discussed it at the time vs. the current generation STS as the 300C seemed to hit all the notes from the reports I read and for $20-30k less than the STS. (I know they're not really in the same league but I can overlook a lot for that amount of coin.) The bottom line is Buick could do the same thing with bold product.

I think you're rewriting history. I've been driving Cadillacs since I was 17 years old (roughly 30 years) and as the years went on people dumped on Cadillacs more and more. Heck even today they're called "old man" cars. That's a trait both Buick and Cadillac share I guess. The CTS and the Escalade turned this around. THE XLR doesn't count because it's really an exotic. I bet you 99% of people would recognize the model or the car if they saw one on the road. You could argue to a certain extent the introduction of the Northstar helped a little (I remember it being mentioned on the sitcom "The Nanny") but it's really when the "Art and Science" program kicked off that Cadillac came back into style. This tells us a lot about the car business. For one, that you CAN revive and car company (not that Cadillac doesn't have problems but it's miles from where it was 10 years ago) and secondly that the right product makes or breaks car companies. Cadillac was the easy division to fix in my mind because it clearly is identified with "the best" and "luxury." Obviously it's not considered the "Best" these days but it's a pretty good product and the Cadillac brand will probably always be used as a term signifying the "best." You don't often hear people say something is the "Cadillac" of a particular category. This is why the other divisions are so much tougher because their brand image is muddled and needs to be clarified... urgently.

Do you really blame GM? I dont' see how you can if you're being honest. GM needs to survive and they can't do it in the current conditions. Something has to break. No matter what you feel about unions, basic economics tells you GM needs to do something about their cost structure. Using the words "getting away with it" makes it sound like they're doing something illegal. They're not. If you want to blame somebody, blame the politicians for lowering the trade barriers and the unions themselves for not unionizing the non-union shops like Toyota and Honda.

I agree but go back to the point I've made in the past: GM *must* articulate why each division appeals to each market segment. Saying each division name should bring very immediate and specific images to mind. Even the banter on this site demonstrates the broad ranges of perceptions people have about each of the divisions. This simply can't happen going forward. Every brand should bring to mind a one word reaction from people. You should be able to ask a market study group the old psychology word association game with the brands. When I say the following brands, what one word comes to mind: Here's mine: Cadillac - Luxury GMC - truck Chevy - basic Pontiac - fun Saab - quirky Buick - grampa Hummer - hulking Saturn - interesting I don't know what GM's idea of what the word list should be. What's yours?

This made me laugh. Keep in mind how image conscious kids are today. If they get even an inkling that something is "uncool" they'll drop it like a hot potato. This is probably the biggest reason Scion was born. I can't argue with the strategy. I suppose if the Buick "Gramps" has is a bench seat, shift-on-the-column version of Buick there won't be a lot of Grandkids looking to get it but if it was a bucket seat, console shift with decent wheels and no white walls I'll bet they wouldn't mind it. They wouldn't buy one because of the "image" thing but they wouldn't mind driving it. Heck, my own son suggested we sell his Honda and keep the Seville I just sold. He's driven both - a LOT - so has a lot of experience and can speak himself as to why he came to this conclusion. (I'm sure he's watching.)

Making statements of generalities is a pissing contest no one can win. I *will* say the people I hear say things like "I'd only drive one if it was free" are kids that don't have money to buy anything so can safely be ignored. By the time they DO have money they'll realize how stupid the comment is. Since you made mention of "everyone I've been around" I'll point out the fact there are a few Saturn owners I work with. Interestingly they're the more technical and intelligent bunch of the company. There are also a LOT of Toyota owners out there who are really nothing more than conservative lemmings. There is no intellectual component of what they buy from a technical perspective. They buy based on what everybody else is buying for the most part. And ya know what? I don't blame them. It takes a lot of brain cycles to study things out and make up your own mind. A lot of times it's just easier to do what everybody else is doing? If they're all wrong, it's ok cuz it will take a HUGE swing in attitude and momentum to change things and so will take a long time. By then they'll have traded their Toyotas. It's the way we are in the US - everything is disposable.

VW has about 1.x% of US market share. I suspect, other than the 60's bug period they've always had this much. The real enemy is Toyota and they should have a bulleyes plastered on them and every Toyota dealership in the country. This, along with some of the marketing metrics mentioned above, are exactly why Saturn desserves support. Amongst the 'enthusiast' sites, Saturn products don't register, but, I suspect, most Honda, Toyota & VW's really don't either... ...Saturn's non image is exactly what many consumers like...I think GM is shooting for the 'designer' Target (stores) crowd....they want clever, interesting design in a useful package, at a reasonable price. Most Americans are proud of a 'smart' buy...and designer looks with utility is where most consumer products are going, regardless of cost...

Pure rubbish. The public does not largely support unions. If they did the unions in general would not have experienced the steady decline they have over the last 30 years (with small exceptions.) The reason the public refused to shop at those stores is intimidation and the natural tendency to want to avoid confrontation. Simple as that. No one is going to debate the damage to Albertson's. It's one of the risks of drawing a line in the sand. In GM's case I don't see that they have any other option. The UAW needs to go after Toyota with their guns blazing.

OK but you're not the volume buying public, which are the kinds of customers GM needs. I personally find it humorous that SO many people (and I know a lot just from people I work with) that are knocking down Toyota's doors to hand over their US dollars under a supposed argument of buying quality when they could have bought a Buick. Look who is a better quality product: http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/23/Autos/amer..._cars/index.htm

Oh my God! Vinyl top? How old are you? 80?

Agreed. Price is one area that consumers are particularly saavy. They shop the web. I've never really understood the resale value issue with GM products. I suppose it could be just a temporary issue as the market has shifted from GM to Toyota but I don't see this happening over a long period of time as consumers won't tolerate it forever and will eventually completely abandon GM. In the mean time I'm enjoying buying quality GM products that are 3-4 years old for cheap money. Go GM!

Why? I'd like to know why?

So what? Manufacturers change their prices all the time in response to demand, availability and product life cycle. Consumer Reports should look at Toyota's practices once in a while.

There's more of this coming as GM continues to decline: ANDERSON, Ind., Feb. 16 — General Motors once had so many plants here that it had to stagger their schedules so that the streets would not be clogged with traffic when the workday ended. At the city's peak, 35 years ago, one of every three people in Anderson worked for G.M. Now there is not a single G.M. plant left, and just two parts plants that G.M. once owned still survive. Anderson, about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis, had 70,000 people in 1970 and now has fewer than 58,000. But in many ways, Anderson is still just as dependent on G.M. as it once was. Only now, rather than being dependent on General Motors, the corporation, it is dependent on General Motors, the welfare state. The company's generous medical plans, prescription drug coverage, dental care and pension checks are a lifeline for the 10,000 G.M. retirees and an untold number of surviving spouses and other family members who still live in the Anderson area. They in turn help to prop up the doctor's offices, hospitals, buffet restaurants and shopping centers that might otherwise vanish along with the G.M. plants around the city that are fast becoming rubble. Anderson's G.M. retirees outnumber its remaining auto manufacturing workers by nearly four to one. "When we all die off, this city will die," Jesse Lollar, 83, said last week, as he finished an early dinner of lima beans and macaroni and cheese at the MCL Cafeteria in the Mounds Mall. Other communities will start to look more like Anderson as G.M. carries out its plan to close a dozen factories and cut 30,000 blue-collar jobs by the end of 2008, in part by offering buyouts and early retirement packages. And Anderson will in all probability begin to look even grimmer as the company cuts back on its vaunted benefits. "General Motors is more than just a symbol of American industry," said Gary N. Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "It envelops the towns where it operates, and people become dependent on it in those towns." Three of those people are Mr. Lollar, a retired G.M. engineer, and his two brothers, Charles, 72, and John, 74, who are also retired from G.M. Together, they share 112 years of collective G.M. experience, years that have been made comfortable by one of the richest retirement plans offered to working Americans. But earlier this month, G.M. told its retired salaried employees and their family members that it planned to cap its health care expenses at the same level as in 2005. It told them that if costs rise, as they are now at a rate of 9 to 10 percent a year, they could expect to pay more for everything from dental and vision care to prescription drugs and doctors' visits, with the full details to come later this year. Medicare could make up some of the difference for older retirees. (G.M. reached an agreement last year with the U.A.W. on a plan that would make modest cuts in hourly workers' medical coverage. The plan still requires court approval.) "You just take it day by day," John Lollar said. "I just hope my benefits last longer than I do." In Anderson, St. John's Medical Center, the city's biggest hospital, is already bracing for the impact of the changes. Over the past two years, 15 to 20 percent of its patients at any one time were G.M. retirees, a spokeswoman said last week. At Community Medical Center, the other major hospital, 14 percent of the patients last year were retired from G.M. Iva Hazelbaker, 96, who retired from her job on an assembly line 35 years ago, said that without G.M., "we'd be in a heck of a mess." Ms. Hazelbaker, who walks with a cane but has a sprightly manner, does not see a very bright future for Anderson, her home for 40 years. "Young people don't stand a chance," she said. Anderson's unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, near its peak for the last ten years and well above the national average of 4.7 percent. Even so, the figure is misleading, said Patrick Barkey, the director of economic and policy studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., because many people here stopped looking for work long ago and are not captured in the numbers. "I think it masks the state of the economy and understates the degree to which the job picture has worsened," Mr. Barkey said. Across the country, about 80 other communities have lost more than a third of their auto manufacturing jobs in the last ten years. A visit to Anderson, now a stripped-down shell of its former self, offers perhaps the starkest example of the damage that plant closings can do. Reminders of the once-mighty auto industry are everywhere: abandoned plants, a ghostly downtown and residents who speak with bewilderment and frustration about what has happened to the auto business. Sharon Boone, 60, followed in her father's footsteps and started working at G.M. when she was 23, building ignition parts on an assembly line. She was eligible for a full retirement package after 30 years with the company, so she left in 1999. Standing in the kitchen of the United Automobile Workers Local 662 hall, she pointed out an aerial photograph of Anderson from 1973. Parking lots around a dozen factories were jammed with hundreds of cars, creating a vibrant city within a city. G.M.'s operations were "so big we even had our own water-treatment plant," Ms. Boone said. "Now the jobs aren't here, and the money isn't here." Along with once being the country's biggest employer until it was passed by Wal-Mart in the 1990's, G.M. was a powerhouse when it came to benefits. And even though G.M. stopped offering retiree health care coverage to new workers 13 years ago, it still covers 679,000 retirees, their spouses and eligible dependents — on top of the coverage it gives to 435,000 active workers. This costs the company an average of $5,000 a year per recipient. Given the sheer number of people who will be affected, the impact of the company's health care changes will run far beyond those of steel makers, retailers, railroads and airlines that have already eliminated or trimmed the benefits that their workers enjoyed. Earlier this month, G.M.'s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, expressed sympathy for those faced with paying more for their coverage. "When these benefits were conceived decades ago, no one could have foreseen the explosive cost inflation that we have been experiencing in recent years," Mr. Wagoner said. Anderson once ranked right behind Flint, Mich., where one out of every two people worked for G.M. at the company's peak in 1978, as the city with the largest concentration of G.M. operations. Back then, G.M. employed 22,000 people in Anderson making everything from headlights to horns; now only 2,600 jobs are left at a pair of auto parts plants, one of them owned by Delphi, which is operating in bankruptcy protection. The other is the Guide Corporation, a headlight and tail light maker that was once a unit of G.M. and is now for sale. Analysts have said the Delphi plant could soon be closed or sold. Across the street from what was once a vast G.M. manufacturing complex on Anderson's industrial east side is the former White Corner bar, one of Anderson's most storied factory taverns. Now called Stanley's, it is still open for business, but patrons are hard to come by. "You used to have to wait for someone to get up to get a seat," Naomi Scales, the 69-year-old daytime bartender, said one recent afternoon as a lone customer sat in the back of the bar, sipping a soda. "It's just not fun anymore." The city's dependence on retiree income is a major concern for the mayor, Kevin S. Smith, who said Anderson must attract new jobs if it is to survive. That is why he has gone as far as Japan and is planning a trip to China to look for investors, armed with multilingual business cards. "We realize those retiree pensions will not be here in the coming years," Mr. Smith said. "That's why it's important that we are involved in new job creation that will employ the younger people now, too, and keep them in our community." Yet there were few young people at the tables of the MCL Cafeteria last week. Its manager, Dan Cantrell, said about a third of his business came from G.M. retirees like the Lollar brothers. With specials like a $4.49 all-you-care-to-eat fish fry on Fridays, the MCL is a favorite of Anderson's elderly, who receive a 10 percent discount in the afternoon. Their spending is "still a lot of the economy," Mr. Cantrell said, referring to the retirees. And Anderson can never hope to find anything as big, or as generous, as G.M. to provide its economic backbone. "There's not really another major manufacturing plant, anything, that could supplement a city's income the way G.M. did — and still does," Mr. Cantrell said. Eventually, the retirees whose G.M. benefits are helping to prop up this place will be gone as well. As Jesse Lollar, the retired G.M. engineer, put it: "We're going to turn the lights off when we leave." link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/business...=th&oref=slogin

This goes back to the fact GM hasn't properly articulated why each brand exists. Their own dealers shouldn't be questioning the existance of divisions. The fact it's happening underscores the "message" problem. Even DCX figured out that pure badge engineering doesn't work - thus the demise of Plymouth. I don't think GM has the balls to make such a bold decision. While the article below says it's "too expensive" to close down a division, it has to be done somehow unless they can come up with a way to justify the existence of all of them. You can't let things continue adrift as they are now and let the slow bleeding kill the company. Personally I think if Saturn has high marks for quality GM SHOULD be dumping money into the division. A reputation for quality is the primary trait Toyota has going for them. It certainly isn't styling. If they can continue the solid quality reputation within the Saturn brand, there's tons of market share to grab.

I'll have to read up on the "5 million 3.4 engines." I find it hard to believe this is a real defect and the government hasn't forced a recall. I love seeing comments like "the mechanic we went to to him he works on these motors all the time." I'm very skeptical about them. Are these GM-certified mechanics or just shade tree mechanics that have been "doing it for years" which automatically makes the experts? I know some of these and they're probably pretty good mechanics. They're not chemists. They're not mechanical engineers. They're mechanics paid to get a job done quickly. Often they don't follow the FSM when doing repairs and then bitch when things don't go well. Take Dexcool for instance. It's been universally maligned by most mechanics that call themselves "experts." A lot also don't connect the fact that the Dexcool they've been exposed to has been in service longer than the expected interval but that's "GM's problem." I've actually had discussions with mechanics I'm friends with about head gaskets they've replaced - wondering why they fail. The response I usually get is "they go all the time." My response to them: bullshit. Head gaskets will last forever if the engines are maintained and particularly if the coolant is kept fresh. This is particularly true down south where they don't worry about coolant freezing but don't realize that one of the 4 key characteristics of coolant is corrosion inhibitors. (They other 2 being heat transfer and not freezing and high boil point.) When they don't change the coolant at recommended intervals because "it doesn't freeze down here" they're just asking for a blown head gasket but that's "GM's problem." The interesting thing to see will be when all these new Toyota and Honda owners get their cars up in miles and they too have failed head gaskets and so forth with they blame the manufacturer. GM's got a long way to go but they don't deserve a lot of the shit slinging that goes on either.

Do ya SEE any common thread here? Lack of quality service? Call GM and complain! Of course you're not going to get a lot of sympathy if you're gonna complain about the *price* of service but the quality should always be top notch. Remember GM is in the business of selling cars and more importantly making money. I agree that service hasn't been quite there however in the past. Particularly those buying high end cars like me expect to be treated well but everyone coming in for service should be treated well. In the dealer's defense, service is not always a fun business. Customers are often rude and bitch about the cost of getting things repaired when they were probably to blame themselves by not doing scheduled maintenance.

Personally I wouldn't be doing anything Gerosa except putting him out to pasture. He was head of Cadillac Sales and Service from 1986 to 1999 apparently. This has to be considered one of the darkest periods for the Cadillac motor division and I don't see the point of rewarding someone for mediocre performance. Particularly in the area of service Cadillac has not been up-to-snuff as compared to competitors. You can argue about the lack of desirably product as a reason for lackluster sales but you can't blame bad service on anything but management. These are the kinds of appointments that really make you wonder if GM gets it. They need to bring in some people from outside who have been successful in their past careers and can bring the benefits of their experiences to GM. Fresh blood.

I don't think anybody believes SUV's are a "way out" for GM. They are a way to generate cash and demonstrate they can build vehicles people want to buy. The challenge they have is to build mainstream smaller vehicles that people will want to AND be willing to buy. Expecting a revolutionary fuel system to be developed that will be the future of GM is naive. Even if it's possible it will take years which is a time scale GM doesn't have.

Let's hope not. That being said however, history does not give comfort. The average democracy lasts about the time the US has existed. The people get complacent and allow the politicians to be corrupt. Sound familiar? An look at our trade and budget deficits. These numbers can't continue.

I would hope this isn't the case. Good managers and particularly senior managers are always (and should be) paranoid. Particularly now he should be very much so.

I don't think the "price ladder" needs to be as complex as it once was. Toyota is certainly proof of this. Of course the challenge is if you eliminate divisions you end up with unhappy dealers. This is part of the reason for the comcept behind pushing Pontiac, Buick and GMC into the same dealers. Even this idea has problems as in my area there are multiple dealers with both Chevy and Buick. They will likely but uninterested in abandoning Buick since they built up the brand in their respective areas. GM market analysts should be able to figure this stuff out and come up with a workable plan. The problem I see is the overlap of models within brands. This is the benefit Toyota has with only Toyota and Lexus. The "step up" is Lexus - no matter which model you choose within the brand. The same can't be said for GM with the rebadging strategy. I've always thought it interesting that Pontiac is the "excitement" division yet Chevy sells the Corvette. This is the kind of paradox that confuses the buying public.

...and in GM's case this would elminate the worry that no updated map CD/DVD's are available at any cost.

Unions are about strength. Strength of the union and strength of the organization being unionized. Without strength in one side or the other, the union idea fails. I don't see GM in a strong position these days but I *do* see Toyota there. Hint. Hint.

OMG! Puh-leeeese!