Not only are they trying to compare favorably to the competition… with cars like the Aura and Malibu and the entire Lambda offerings, they’re pushing green in a big way to change their image and see if they get more people into the showroom. From that standpoint, it might be their best move to date. With not a ton of green offerings offered in such a wide spread of the market, GM is attacking the whole philosophy in a huge way and that image can only do nothing but good to draw people in to check out a GM, even if in the past they were leary of GM’s quality prior. It’s something to spark the interest and see if GM truly has changed.

My concern with the GM product isn’t just whether or not the interior bits will hold up for 10 years. After owning a pair of Chevy’s… the interior material selections were so bad that the dash warped, various excess panels (flaws in the overall design) were left dangling and hanging, and mind you… this from someone that doesn’t beat the heck out of their cars. The reality is, with a flimsy chassis structure and super stiff shocks, the car and the Chicagoland roads I live on took care of that on it’s own.

My main concern is the parts under the skin… the brakes made out of outsourced cheap metal that costs less, warps and pits at the first sign of moisture, and helps them get away with higher margins. This has ALWAYS been more of the problem IMHO than whether or not the cars met the imports toe for toe on performance. When you have cars with a myriad of electronic gremlins (like our past Grand Am which ate it’s alternator just about yearly) or have vaccuum hoses that rot repeatedly (Buick) or have constant misfires with past V6’s due to ignition coil packs going wonky not long after installation… you’ve got design and engineering problems. THAT is why more and more people shifted from domestic to import throughout the 1980’s. It’s not just the product GM put out there, it’s how piss-poor the product was that GM put out there, how ambiguous, and how decontented the componentry in the car is. Corporate beancounting to save a few dollars and sell the car for a higher margin is a primary reason GM cars, which were seldom, if-ever, competitive on features and performance statistics… but much less overall quality, are absolutely the reason GM, Ford, and Chrysler have lost their way with the American public. That’s not counting the product planning missteps and being inopportune with product launches or building things no one wanted (i.e. Aztek ring a bell?).

I’d have loved to have cross-shopped GM when I bought my latest car. That said, when you’re looking at a Cobalt with a noted reliability record vs. the car I chose, it was a no-brainer. The Cobalt is a definite improvement over the old antique Cavalier and it’s decrepid old platform… but it’s still lightyears away from the top class runners in it’s segment in terms of engineering, materials selection, and build quality. The Astra, with it’s more European underpinnings and less decontenting is a far more competitive car, despite the fact it’s grossly underpowered. It’s a shame there’s been no Redline announcement and intentions on using the turbo-charged VX version. That car alone could literally draw people into Saturn showrooms in droves.

Far as California’s love with GM though, I do believe the EV1 was a pretty popular and watershed moment that had a lot of Californians raving about a GM product for the first time in forever. It was better received than pretty much every other EV sold there. The canceling of the program, while perhaps necessary due to the expenses incurred (I do have to admit if the leasee’s from Who Killed The Electric Car were hit with a $100,000+ buyout pricetag they’d probably be less inclined to cry foul at GM, although admittedly… the marketing for the thing from the ads shown was absolutely hilarious and makes a serious claim for the documentary’s producer’s angle that GM didn’t want to sell these cars, even if I think there are major shortcomings in strict EV’s myself that likely won’t be fixed for awhile)… has already been noted by Rick Wagoner as a major mistake in GM’s executive decision process and something he ultimately regrets. If your company CEO can admit that they wronged, then it shows just another cog in the overall mix as to why GM has been charting the wrong path for far too long.

There are sensible Americans that can see the truth… and there are those that are so Patriotic that their flag waving blinds them from the reality. While many Americans would love to buy American, there’s fewer and fewer truly American (U.S.A.) cars from American (U.S.A.) companies that are built to a high standard, that are competitive with their competition, and that are reliable. I’m hoping GM’s new path does turn it around, maybe I and my family members (currently in GM’s) will return to the fray at a later date. Yet after some of the crap my family and I, long-time supporters of GM product, even retired GM workers, have gone through in the last 30 years… the more they’re on the edge and need to deliver. Of GM’s past Chairman dating back to Roger Smith, Rick Wagoner is byfar the best chairman they’ve had to date. I hope he can carve out a legacy that makes people proud of GM again, I think their current direction *MIGHT* take them there, assuming that the quality of the new GM car isn’t just something superficial/cosmetic but is through and through.

BTW, I think you’re in less of a minority than you think. I believe that many an import driver does so more for some sort of snob appeal than anything else. If it were otherwise, they’d drive American BECAUSE they are equal to, if not better than, the competition.

Your comments sound as if you believe no American car companies produce any competitive product. When you say “the home team has to START playing with a winning strategy” implies they currently have no winning strategy and their products are all uncompetitive. If you believe that, and if you’re from California, you just proved my original comment to be true.