For a company so utterly devoted to each of its 11 brands -- counting offshore badges such as Opel, Holden, Vauxhall -- the overarching strategy seems to be to flatten the distinctiveness out of all of them in the name of global efficiencies. Take Saab, poor Saab. The new 9-3s will be built in Russelsheim, Germany, alongside Opel Vectras. The 9-2X is a badge-engineered Subaru WRX. The 9-7X is a Chevy Trailblazer built in the Nordic enclave of Moraine, Ohio.
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An American idle
The Pontiac G6 is a sales flop. At General Motors, let the impeachment proceedings begin.
RUMBLE SEAT
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday April 07, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Car review -- A review of the Pontiac G6 in Wednesday's Highway 1 section included a photo of a G6 with a six-speed manual transmission. The G6 that was reviewed was a four-speed automatic.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday April 13, 2005 Home Edition Highway 1 Part G Page 2 Features Desk 0 inches; 32 words Type of Material: Correction
Car review -- An April 6 review of the Pontiac G6 included a photo of a G6 with a six-speed manual transmission. The G6 that was reviewed comes with a four-speed automatic.
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Other recent Wagoner miscues:
GM utterly missed the boat on hybrid gas-electric technology and lobbied Congress not to raise fuel-economy standards on the grounds that meeting higher standards would divert funds from critical research in the ultimate propulsion technology, hydrogen fuel cells -- an argument that, shall we say, lacks authenticity. Today, GM has no hybrids of consequence on the street, while rivals Toyota and Honda are selling as many as they can build.
As part of a product reorganization, GM announced last month that it would speed up development of new SUVs and trucks in the pipeline and slow-walk development of rear-wheel-drive Zeta car projects. So, let's see: At a time when SUV sales are cliff-diving, GM proposes to speed up big SUV development and 86 the mid-size, rear-drive future products?
This reallocation of deck chairs seems pointless when the real problem is the massive overhead of a company that cannot find the will to downsize. Capitalism, remember, is creative destruction.
However, the best case for a putsch in GM's Renaissance Center offices is this: The cars aren't selling.
Honestly, it takes some sort of perverse genius to make the Grand Am, the car the Pontiac G6 replaces, look like a showroom winner, but the G6 is selling at about half the volume of the unloved and unlovely Grand Am, which dates to the 1980s. Even a multimillion-dollar giveaway of G6s on "Oprah" in September wasn't enough to fire up sales of this car.
Six months into its life, the G6 has thousands of dollars on its nose and analysts are calling it a flop. Last month, Pontiac offered more incentive money as a percentage of MSRP than any other brand, a full 16%, according to Edmunds.com.
The G6 is not an awful car. It's entirely adequate. But plainly, adequate is not nearly enough.
