“GM is also working on several other measures to change the culture at GM, but Henderson failed to elaborate on those” – it would require fast decision making.

I’m really beginning to hate these types of articles finger-pointing GM-FORD etc on being caught with too many large vehicles after gas hit $4 a gallon. The public demanded these vehicles and bought them so of course that is what they were going to build in volume. Supply and Demand

If they had focused on small fuel-efficient vehicles in their arsonal, gee what would the writers have said when gas went down to $2 and the buyers all flocked to Toyota-Honda to buy the larger vehicles they offered? They would have said GM-Ford etc missed the boat by not offering the public the larger vehicles they wanted.

They cannot win…..

These types of articles that have finger pointing are absolutely correct in their assumptions. As a business as large as GM you have to diversify your offerings to be able to meet a changing marketplace. Ignoring cars and spending everything on large trucks / suv’s leads to 2 things.

1. A great lineup of trucks
2. No foothold in a market that was growing as consumer demand increased.

That’s just poor business decisions. Granted there were a few excellent cars coming, but “too little too late”

I’ve never questioned the speed at which GM has made decisions, just the decisions themselves.

Wow…think so? Remember the Solstice/Sky showing up 17 years late to the Miata party?

GM will make decisions as quickly as Congress can pass bills telling them what to do

It takes the Gov’t to kick these guys’ arse and make decisions.

The past 35 years of slow, poor decisions, it finally took Obama’s task force to face the music and do what needed to be done.

Cough.. camaro.. cough cough sniff

Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a bug there A4. Take two G8s and call me in the morning.

miket, stop trying to make sense, that’ll never work here!

sorry

@denverguy
couldn’t agree more.
I would put my entire life savings on that if gas went down and we weren’t in a recession, GM wouldn’t even be able to meet the demand for trucks and SUV’s because they’re selling them so fast.

Nobody can predict the perfect storm that has happened to our countries housing marking and economy in the past few years. Nobody. Not even fcuking honda or toyota.

Good Riddance people

Miket and Leftwing,

Please tell me that you predicted that the US economy would plummet and gas would skyrocket.
You knew that this would happen?

mmk http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k44/bigs4610/smileys/noah.gif

[img]http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k44/bigs4610/smileys/noah.gif[/img]

didnt work
whatever

I don’t predict anything. Having crappy small cars and ignoring that market leaves your business more exposed to a shift in market demands. That’s basic business. Fortune cookie or magic 8-ball not required.

Teahead – carefull what you say , mayer_ray_nagin will call you a collectivist drone (or something like that ).

According to Wall Street GM has been in the hole since 70’s. We are looking at 40 years of retarded decisions made at slow speed. What article in what publication can change that? There were a lot of promising start up projects and all of them went south. Before economy tanked and gas became $4/gallon GM accumulated 100 billions worth of debt. Yes, all companies are doing poorly today, not all of them are in bankruptcy with 100 billions of bad debt and 50 billions of government subsidy to help them move along. And I would bet that they will fail, except I can’t even bet on them (but I did made money on their stock!).

Johnny:
Great come back.
But if that doesn’t work you can get a CTS or CTS-V shot.

That hot new CTS wagon in -V configuration would be the automotive equivalent of a mullet!

Business in the front.. PARTY in the back!!

spg+teahead+LWA = collectivist drones

We’ll see. Old habits never die.

I know you GM folks won’t find this funny but Henderson looks like the Kind of Guy that would be faster with decision for ordering out for Lunch than product line. But we’ll see. IF Gm could some how lose its vast droves of idiots that follow them maybe they can start a better company. Right now I still think they suck.

yeah, bigs, the point is that if you ignore a chunk of the market, and then the market shifts to emphasize that chunk you ignored, and you then go bankrupt, you’ve committed the error of over-committing to one aspect of a broader market…

think of it like a battlefield, world war I style, where two opposing forces met each other across long lines of battle…in the middle of your line is your best unit, and they attack straight ahead…that unit may have great success beating the crap out of the forces in front of them, but if they go too far they become vulnerable to being flanked and surrounded…that’s how gm and others proceeded with SUVs…they charged ahead with these highly profitable models, but when the market shifted (and gm/etc. got flanked) they took more losses than other companies with a broader selection of vehicles that included higher efficiency vehicles (honda)…

it has nothing to do with predicting what gas prices will be, it has to do with be prepared for a rapidly shifting marketplace…

let me put it this way…in this day and age, few large car companies are going to be able to survive with all their eggs in one basket, be it SUVs, or sports cars, or econoboxes…there are a lot of niches to the automobile market, and having strong players in as many of those niches as possible is how you survive the ups and downs of the market…

essentially, the gms of the world put too much emphasis on gas guzzlers, which made them vulnerable to fluctuations in gas prices…that in itself is a flawed strategy, and it’s not surprising it backfired…it was just a matter of time….

back to your cave, mayer!

Damn, about time someone realized this! I’m happy this guy is in charge, at least he sees the shortcomings in his company and tries to improve them.

Mayer_Ray_Nagin==Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly feet kisser.

teahead, yeah obama is the Messiah! The U.S. Government isn’t at all known for being bureaucratic.