This weekend, I drove a pretty decent car from General Motors.
The review is here. I didn’t want the pro-GM people on the board to get caught up in what would fundamentally be tangential to the main thrust of the review, so I’m saving my thought for there.
When was the last time we expected anything but “decent” from GM? Was it the Seventies? We expect greatness from Toyota or Honda — when the last-generation Accord turned out to be merely decent, you would have thought the world had collapsed. But the bar for the General is set at “okay” and they only manage to step over it about one-third of the time.
The original LaCrosse had a joke of an interior. This one has the interior it should have always had. Would we accept that from Lexus? Of course not. (Unless it’s a truck.) When will GM do the right thing and just deliver the completely “baked” and properly competitive car from the jump? Will it take another bankruptcy?
Yes… it will take another bankruptcy. Heck, even if they had a good leader, maybe they could get back on track. There’s so much wrong with the company and 95% of it is culture. As the autoextremist says, the true believers are the only ones that get anything done.
I would like to send you an article from a PCA news letter…. how can I get that done.
” the culture ” .
THIS.
-Nate
(Bowtie fanboi)
GM reminds me of Technology giants that find see their greatness in the rear view mirror. They have to endure years of shrinkage and mediocrity before finding a new niche or becoming small enough to become a useful part of a different company.
The mainframe era of computing hold plenty of examples. There always seems to be a long slow downward momentum that can never truly be overcome.
“The mainframe era of computing hold plenty of examples.”
uh, you can find far more recent examples of that. Sony, for example.
“Another” bankruptcy? Does that refer to the previous bankruptcy-in-name-only, where nothing changed except for uncomfortable liabilities borne out of incompetence and malfeasance being erased? Where the unions were richly rewarded with partial ownership for their indolence and resistance to efficiency and dedication, over bondholders? And with “new” management culture no different in their, uh, indifference, with no change to incentive (and responsibility/ punishment) structure?
What’s needed is a real bankruptcy, where rule of law is upheld, not held up at hammer-and-sickle–point.
Good point.
no. GM needs management which knows who the “car people” are and let them do what they know is right. I don’t know if Mary Barra is that kind of management, but I sure as hell know Akerson wasn’t, nor was Whitacre. Wagoner at least knew that he should shut up and listen when Bob Lutz was talking about the product, even as he (Wagoner) was still in denial about GM’s comeuppance.
And this isn’t deserving of similar “praise” http://www.nairaland.com/attachments/439878_GEDC0087_JPG3247d6aa52537fb3e3f2cd28f2b6e565
Taken from a 2009 Camry.
That was the low point for Camry IMO. Some people think it was 1998 but at least back then you could get a V6 Sport stick-shift.