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Personally I think GM should cut some cost by cutting some brands and models. Keep Chevy and Caddy. They're doing the right thing with Saturn becoming Opel America and if they play their cards right and give it a little time it could work as their mid-level luxuary division. Pontiac and Buick, though having a long history with GM, just isn't cutting it anymore. They seem to be falling back on the brand engineering kick again. The Outlook, Acadia, Enclave, and Traverse are all great crossover vehicles but they are all the same vehicle with different styling cues. The Aura, Malibu, and G6 are basicly the same car as well. The Impala, Lacross, and Grand Prix are also the same car. They made a bad decision in buying Daewoo. I'm of two minds on their purchase of Saab. Opel and Holden was a great buy. They could probably afford to drop Saab. Get GM down to Caddy, Chevy (including trucks), Buick or Saturn (either being Opel America), and GMC for commercial vehicles.
I agree you ditch ponitac or buick you will have an uprising on your hands. Just because you dont see the sales does not mean they are not there. I can see cutting back on how many models they have but not drop them all together.
US franchise laws mean simply dropping a brand is cost prohibitive. GM is consolidating its brands under one roof - you'll see dealerships selling cross brand now like Chevy-Cadillac-Hummer, Saturn-Pontiac-Saab, etc.
Longer term GM will sell less models across brands and will consolidate by keeping multiple marquees in one place. It keeps redundancy down, cuts costs in trying to make the same car different, yet keeps sales volumes high enough.
Donna Harris
General Motors will begin a marketing campaign Friday designed to reassure U.S. customers that they can still obtain auto loans through their dealerships even though credit through GMAC remains tight.
The campaign -- called "Financing That Fits" -- promotes the free Web-based credit application system that dealers already use, Route One.
Route One lets dealers access hundreds of lending institutions, including GMAC Financial Services. The lenders serve consumers with a wide range of credit scores.
The advertising follows GMAC's announcement Monday that it would only finance customers with credit scores of 700 or higher.
"They're just trying to let people know that they can go out and buy a car," said Tom Durant, owner of Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine, Texas.
This reminds me of something that I once read that talked about how GM actually lost from dropping olds. I never saw any numbers on lost sales vs. the cost savings from one less brand's OH, but I remember hearing that rather than simply shift to other GM makes, the Olds buyers that were there were either too angry at GM or indifferent about other GM makes, so they went and tried Toyota, Honda and the like.
Dealers have a large amount of power at GM, and since they all want a full line, it seems like the brands have a place, as backward-logic as that may seem perhaps.
As for Buick, their popularity in China should put them on GM's list of "troubled brand that has potential." I really like some of the looks of concepts that are out there, and since Buick says "exotic American car for the successful" in China, what would it say if they were to learn that "actually, Americans have grown so tired them that they have discontinued selling them in the states." Even a scaled back Buick US market, properly designed to operate for the greater sales abroad would be a smarter move than pulling it altogether as long as they're selling like hotcakes over there.
As for Caddy, I understand the power and desires that dealers have in the GM network, but not having Caddy as a standalone dealer is quite the shame.
They create Saturn as a direct competitor to Honda and Toyota small cars, then decide to make it a full line of vehicles.
Whats laughable is that up until the introduction of the Aura (a European car basically), they were soooooooooooo far behind that it was pathetic. Even more pathetic is that GM sourced Honda motors for one of their Saturns (VUE Redline). Beat em by joining em, right GM?
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