GM pulls its ads from the LA Times

GM has stopped buying ads in the LA Times because they don't like
this article by pulitzer-prize-winning car reviewer Dan Neil:

April 6th, 2005

RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL
An American idle
The Pontiac G6 is a sales flop.
At General Motors, let the impeachment proceedings begin.

By Dan Neil, Times Staff Writer

At the moment the news broke, I had written two words of a review of the
Pontiac G6: "Dump Lutz."

On Monday morning, the news came that General Motors North America Chairman
Robert Lutz and Group Vice President Gary Cowger were "relinquishing" their
duties with GM North America to assume unspecified roles in GM's global
product development and manufacturing efforts -- compared with the high
profile role Lutz has occupied, this is like "extraordinary rendition" to
Pakistan.

Although GM's chairman and chief executive is Rick Wagoner, Bob Lutz --
also known as "Maximum Bob" -- has been the point man for GM policy an
future product design, the Great White-Haired Father, the Man with the Golden
Gut, the auto industry's most quotable and charismatic executive in a town
where charisma is scarcer than banana trees.

In his 3 1/2 -year tenure, GM has lost something like 3 percentage points of
market share. I was about to make the case that, given GM's current China
syndrome -- North American market share dropping to its lowest point i
decades, and market analysts, sensing no real momentum for reform within the
company, downgrading the company's bond ratings to near-junk status --
someone's head ought to roll, and the most likely candidate would be the
numinous white noggin of Lutz.

Cashiering Lutz, I would have argued, would be a positive sign for the
street's analysts that the company is serious about accountability. Indeed,
it had to be Lutz, for symbolic reasons that go beyond the car business.
Of course, the responsibility is not solely his, but the culture of executive
exoneration has to end somewhere, and it's not going to be in Washington, D.C.

However, given recent events, I have to revise my story. To wit: Dump Wagoner.

It was Lutz, after all, who candidly averred at a Morgan Stanley meeting last
month that GM might have to phase out some of its product lines, even using
the word "damaged" to describe Pontiac and Buick. In the ensuing furor, Lutz
claimed his remarks were taken out of context and over-hyped by the
sensationalist media, like that scandal rag Automotive News.

Wagoner memo to Lutz: Stop making sense.

GM is a morass of a business case, but one thing seems clear enough, and
Lutz's mistake was to state the obvious and then recant: The company's
multiplicity of divisions and models is turning into a circular firing squad.
How can four nearly identical minivans -- one each for Pontiac, Buick,
Chevrolet and Saturn -- be anything but a waste of resources? Ditto the Four
Horsemen of Suburbia, the Buick Rainier, Chevrolet TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy and
Saab 9-7X. How does the Pontiac Montana minivan square with Pontiac as the
"Excitement" division? Why, exactly, is GMC on this Earth?

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.

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.

Exterior styling: The G6 sedan, based on the same stretched-wheelbase platform
as the Malibu Maxx, has its wheels in the right place, nicely quadratic and
corner-wise. There are a few odd proportions that add up to a kind of visual
consternation: The car's front tapers around the headlamps like a school
eraser; the rear deck is more a rear bustle, with an arm's length of sheet
metal over the rear wheel wells; and wheels and tires themselves seem small
when, at 17 inches in the GT package, they aren't really.

Meanwhile, the detailing of the bodywork makes the skin of the car look
eggshell-thin. I wonder how many buyers look at this car and wonder what is
behind the billboard?

Interior styling: The GT comes with comfortable leather-lined bucket seats,
nicely bolstered with heaters. I like the soft grip on the hand brake.
That exhausts my praise for the interior.

The center console is a plastic fantastic with the now-familiar stacked
boxes of the audio head and climate controls, and we know what comes with
familiarity. This is pretty much a style-free zone in a larger moor of
monochromatic plastic and vinyl.

The G6 does have a couple of fun features, both optional: an oversized moon
roof that folds back in sections so that, lined up on the roof, the car
looks solar-powered; and a remote starting function.

Some options are less fun: Side-impact and curtain air bags, four-wheel
anti-lock brakes and traction control are all cost-extra options on the
base model.

Performance: The GT model I drove had a 3.5-liter iron-block V6 under the
hood, good for 200 horsepower and no surprises at all. And -- though I
can't believe I'm writing this sentence in 2005 this pushrod six is mated
to a four-speed automatic transmission. It is because of this powertrain
that the phrase "thrashy and unrefined" has become the hackneyed cliche
that it has.

The electric steering is numb and oddly weighted. Though I thought the
ride was very nice, the handling is pushier than a mortgage-refinance
telemarketer. The car has zero appetite for hard driving. You want
excitement from the "Excitement" division? Try to get this thing to turn
in a sharp corner.

Bah.

This is an uncompetitive product, an assertion borne out not by my say-so
but by sales numbers. When ballclubs have losing records, players and
coaches and managers get their walking papers.

At GM, it's time to sweep the dugout.

Andrew wrote:

> GM has stopped buying ads in the LA Times because they don't like
> this article by pulitzer-prize-winning car reviewer Dan Neil:
>
> April 6th, 2005
>
> RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL
> An American idle
> The Pontiac G6 is a sales flop.
> At General Motors, let the impeachment proceedings begin.
>
> By Dan Neil, Times Staff Writer
>
> At the moment the news broke, I had written two words of a review of the
> Pontiac G6: "Dump Lutz.

I think the problem with GM is the corporate culture of fear where
no one dares take creative chances. That's why they go with whatever
worked in the past (and have that as a cover your ass excuse in
case of failure): SUVs and trucks, that's why no one in
management dared venture into hybrids.

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, 223rem wrote:

> I think the problem with GM is <snip>

There are many, many, many problems with GM.

You got that right... the other day... they downgraded GM bonds to
"junk" status...

Professor
www.telstar-electronics.com

Daniel J. Stern wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, 223rem wrote:
>
> > I think the problem with GM is <snip>
>
> There are many, many, many problems with GM.

I used hear stuff like this years back but it really
didn't sink in me, so much so I that I bought new
'97 Chevy Blazer, which had heating core replaced (some
$900 job, which I would have done myself if I had time
when radiator coolant started seeping inside vehicle),
was giving constant warning code (transmission). I traded
it in for '03 Trailblazer (new). I just saw Consumer Report
magazine article where they had '02-'04 Trailblazer among
worst used vehicles to buy. Between my wife and I, we have
besides '03 Trailblazer, '05 Ford Focus (bought in Dec. '04)
and I just bought used '00 Ford Ranger. I honestly tried to
stay away from Japanese imports. But when you look at recent
Consumer Report magazine rating, goood and reputable popular
cars are almost all Japanese. Does anyone have any reason to question
why buy American slogan sounds quite let me say
almost stupid?

Between so much of Detroit money being based on SUV sales (now tanking),
and so much of their stuff being made elsewhere besides the US (Ford Focus
made in Mexico), it seems the "American" auto industry is down for the
count.

In this day and age of rising gas prices, it also in worth pointing out
that almost all the fuel efficient cars/trucks are either Japanese or
German. What's the most fuel efficient car actually made in the US by a US
company? Maybe a Dodge Neon, getting close to 30 mpg average (auto), or
Chevy Cobalt? Really pathetic, considering that the Japanese counterparts
get about 25 percent better fuel economy. Even the bigger Camry or Accord
gets about the same fuel economy as the Neon.

Magnulus wrote:

> Between so much of Detroit money being based on SUV sales (now tanking),
> and so much of their stuff being made elsewhere besides the US (Ford Focus
> made in Mexico), it seems the "American" auto industry is down for the
> count.
>
> In this day and age of rising gas prices, it also in worth pointing out
> that almost all the fuel efficient cars/trucks are either Japanese or
> German.

Yawn, you must be a youngster. This was rant 30 years ago. Its was
true then and maybe true now. We went to sleep for a while but the the
big dawg (wearing an oily turban) keeps coming back to bite us in the ass.

I'm not sure when we will 'technologe' ourselves out of this grip but
one thing that can be said is that we aren't making any great strides
towards doing so.

Gas prices doubled/tripled in the early 70s and you could only get gas
on the days that corresponded with your plate number. Speed limits
nationwide were dropped to 55 for economy. "we" coughed up the Pinto
and Vega in response but the days of the 8-10 mpg sleds were over.
Now its time to kill off those 12-15mpg housewife SUVs...and maybe
rattle a few chains with OPEC by forcefully occupying Iraq.

We're not in crisis yet but we hopefully will have a clue as to how to
manage it this time around should our comfy US gas prices reach
worldwide averages.

-BM

Magnulus wrote:

> Between so much of Detroit money being based on SUV sales (now tanking),
> and so much of their stuff being made elsewhere besides the US (Ford Focus
> made in Mexico), it seems the "American" auto industry is down for the
> count.

Ford and the Chrysler Group of DC seem to be doing pretty good. Although
niether of them did any of the following:

- Hung their future almost entirely on expected sales of huge SUVs
- Decide to build one of their most popular engines in China
- Fart around with electric steering that feels like stirring molasses
- Make all their mid-level cars so generic that it hurts
- Move away from rear-drive just as everyone else moves back to rear-drive
- Take a potential HUGE seller (the GTO) and then style it like a Grand
Am on steroids instead of like... well... a GTO
- Kill Oldsmobile and keep Saturn (geeze!)
- Overlap the hell out of the different divisions' product lines so
they're fighting with each other

I could go on for pages....

"Steve" > wrote in message
...
> - Fart around with electric steering that feels like stirring molasses

Electric steering is suppossed to be good, cut down on drain on engine
power, improve fuel economy and all that. What are you comparing the
feeling to? If it's the typical American car, well, that's the problem-
light floaty steering with no feeling.

> - Make all their mid-level cars so generic that it hurts

I think the Chevy Cobalt and the Malibu look OK. At least its not
obscene looking like some of the Chrysler car, I don't see how car reviewers
think cars like the 300C look good. They look like what you get when you
mix a car designed for old geezers with no taste with pimp wagons. PT
Cruiser is distinctive, the 300C is just crass.

> - Kill Oldsmobile and keep Saturn (geeze!)

Good idea, Saturn is a better brand that Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile is an
old geezer car, just like Buick.

Magnulus wrote:

> "Steve" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>- Fart around with electric steering that feels like stirring molasses
>
>
> Electric steering is suppossed to be good, cut down on drain on engine
> power, improve fuel economy and all that. What are you comparing the
> feeling to? If it's the typical American car, well, that's the problem-
> light floaty steering with no feeling.
>

As opposed to heavy steering with no feeling. great.

>
>>- Make all their mid-level cars so generic that it hurts
>
>
> I think the Chevy Cobalt and the Malibu look OK. At least its not
> obscene looking like some of the Chrysler car, I don't see how car reviewers
> think cars like the 300C look good. They look like what you get when you
> mix a car designed for old geezers with no taste with pimp wagons. PT
> Cruiser is distinctive, the 300C is just crass.

300C looks way better than the Malibu, at least it is trying to be
different - even if you don't like it you gotta give them props for
trying. The malibu is like the automotive equivalent of Wonder bread or
a McDonald's burger. So bland it's physically painful. I mean, you
just look at it and it looks like an old Lumina, but, like, a little
different. Why did they bother to restyle? And you know it cost a
crapload to do, and they still ended up with a mediocre car.

>
>
>>- Kill Oldsmobile and keep Saturn (geeze!)
>
>
> Good idea, Saturn is a better brand that Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile is an
> old geezer car, just like Buick.
>

Wow, you really don't have any perspective on history, do you? Both
Olds and Buick were known for some really nice machines back in the day
before GM homogenized everything in the 70's. Ever hear of a 442?
GS350 or GS455? Or if muscle isn't your thing, both divisions made some
decent luxury-oriented rides as well... My one grandfather was an Olds
man and the other always drove Buicks, both kept late 60's versions of
each years and years past their "best before" date. Compare and
contrast with Saturn, which seems to be the "Ikea" of American cars.

I'm just pretty disgusted with GM, they had a great heritage going into
the 70's and then ****ed it all away. Now when they really could be
reinventing themselves they just keep repeatedly shooting themselves in
the foot, aside from bright spots like the new 'vette.

nate

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