I think it's safe to say to place this theory somewhere between Big Oil/Detroit's alleged conspiracy against the electric car and Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, ascribing human technological advances to alien visitations. Robert Horvath is the former Coral Gables Oldsmobile dealer who somehow decided that Oldsmobile's road to oblivion wasn't paved with good intentions and/or the inevitable result of a confederacy of dunces. While I haven't read Horvath's tome Project 2000, I read the press release, which, sensibly enough, makes no mention of the Toyota angle. By the end of our chat, I was feeling sorry for Mr. Horvath. No matter what you think of the wisdom of killing Olds, it behooves us to remember the executive actions have very real human consequences.
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please, please, please do more podcasts like this. this got me over the 2:00 slump at work. this is up there with my favourites, including the one done with the psychic about car insurance.
I understand his argument about the non-compete and it is the one that comes up all the time…GM CANNOT COMPETE!!!
I do have a hard time figuring out who paid off GM though, was it Japan as a country? He kept bringing up the Camry and the Accord but that the deal was signed wtih Toyota. What does the Accord have to do with it? Was part of the deal that Toyota/Honda/Japan can’t make a sports car that rivals the corvette?
The holes in his theroy are big enough to swallow up Oldsmobile…but it is a novel idea to get the rusty gears turning.
2+2 does always equal 4
Just listened to it. I love conspiracies as much as the next tin foil hat wearing guy, but they’re usually very one sided and the people preaching them won’t ever hear any voice of reason. Sorry about his dealership being closed down, but its pretty obvious by the end that this guy is out to sell books.
BTW great having the podcasts back, I always turn on itunes in the morning and there they are waiting for me.
What was this deal? You shut down Oldsmobile and we will continue to steal market share from you and crush any hopes you have of making a profit off of your vehicles. Sweet!
Hey I’ll sleep better tonight 33% of Toyotas profits?My pension is safe.Better yet I’m gonna put a suggestion in tonight to make the same deal for Pontiac and Buick.
Lets see I recieve 2% of savings over 2yrs We con BMW into axing the Caddy. Oh yeah!
Thats a classic RF
Forget the book, this is gonna make one hell of a movie. I’d like to see Christopher Walken play Mr.Horvath.
the idea that when something so unexpected and something so seemingly nonsensical happens causes people to attribute it to some kind of outside force or even some kind of supernatural event is quite common unfortunately.
in Mr. Horvath’s case I believe that he just can’t reconcile the fact that Oldsmobile died ignominiously despite being so successful in the 70s and early 80s.
The fact that Oldsmobile died due to mismanagement and plain incompetence is inconceivable to him. Afterall, From 1970-1985, the Olds Cutlass was the #1 selling car in the U.S.A., and during those years, GM’s Oldsmobile Division was described as the #1 most-sought-after franchise in the world, according to Automotive News.
Oldsmobile was so great, so successful that the only it could have died was from a conspiracy from Japan.
This podcast reminded me of the classic Saturday Night Live skit spoofing a 60 Minutes interview. In it a Mike Wallace impersonator is interviewing Martin Short who is playing a character with a talent for avoiding the question. Classic television comedy and now a classic TTAC podcast! Damn, I LOVE THIS SITE!!!!
I bet he still has the stockpile of canned beans and gold coins he saved up in preparation for the Y2K bug catastrophe.
Incredibly amusing stuff, Mr. Farago. Thanks for digging that up.
I can remember buying a new Cutlass from King with my dad back in 1972…
Who knew the guy was nuts? I shouldn’t say that. He sounds like an old man who can’t understand how such a proud and mighty division was allowed to atrophy and eventually be closed. Combine that with his wife’s illness, and he’s obviously come to the only theory that makes sense to him.
But if he’s like the other Oldmobile franchise owner I personally know, he’s not suffering for money, either…perhaps he really did love Oldsmobile.
Whats funny is that he does get right that GM hasn’t built a competitive car to the Camry, and that the dealers told GM what was needed and GM didn’t listen. I guess he came up with his crazy scenario as no one in his position could believe that GM could be so incompetent and stupid.
Who paid DCX for Plymouth? And where did that money get spent? I smell a sequel!
Horvath reminds me of those calls I get from my bank or credit card company wasting my time soliciting some bogus service I don’t need or want. It’s a real challenge to get off the phone without being rude.
Wow, a very enlightening story. Robert, you are a patient man!
Lets assume the figures Mr. Horvath states are correct, I would imagine that the cost of designing, engineering, fabricating, and distributing lousy Oldsmobile products would be much more costly than the 3 billion he says Toyota is paying them to not compete with the Camry. Which would make it a loosing deal, which even GM wouldn’t be silly enough to take.
Thats the gaping hole in the theory that stands out to me. The pay off wouldn’t be worth it.
My hat is off to you on how well you redirected him to point.
There is some validity here – 30 years ago Olds WAS the in-car to have….what the hell happened?
This is making my head spin like Lewis Black…I’ve got blood coming out of my ears to understand this conspiracy theory. “If it wasn’t for that horse…I would have gotten through college.”
This guy gets my vote for crazy, pissed off old coot award. Sorry Senators Stevens & Byrd but you’ve got some crazy coot competition.
Methinks Mr. Horvath has lost some neurons/neural connections, although has managed to keep enough to write a book.
Yes, Oldsmobile was the in-car 30 years back, before the 2nd oil shock of the 70’s. The Big Mo was lost soon afterwards.
“Project 2000” huh. Sad to see someone would cook up a conspiracy like this just because there company can’t keep up with the Japanese automakers. To say that GM had the technology to make cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda but chose not to is totally lame. GM knows that it cannot compete with Toyota or Honda when it comes to high efficient cars. Just is nothing but a guy wanting to get attention……
I’d be interested to hear just what brand he thinks that GM should have cut instead. There was and still is major overlap in the product lineup of GM; something had to go.
I must say that I was taken aback by the outright declaration that GM hasn’t made anything that can compete with the Accord and Camry.
Nemphre: at the time, there was a case to be made that Buick and/or Pontiac should have gotten the knife instead. Oldsmobile’s lineup was arguably in much better shape against the competition. Losing Olds really wasn’t a bright idea, at least from an external viewpoint. The cognitive dissonance clearly put poor Mr Horvath over the edge.
I think the decision to deep 6 the Olds brand was their average customer was in their late 60’s and disappearing fast. Buick (early 60’s) was closely behind with Pontiac a little further (late 50’s). Once their die hard (pun intended) customers passed on they had no sales and their lame attempt to be an import fighter (Olds Alero anyone) then a performance division just blurred any vision as to what Olds meant as a brand. Honestly my first car was an ’80 Olds Omega. That was the biggest piece of crap I ever owned (but it was a hand me down and it was free so I took it). I never bought another ‘Merican car since then (except for a couple of pickups).
whitenose: Pontiac and/or Buick would have indeed made better sacrificial lambs, but the best in my mind would have Saturn which, if you look at it, has really begun occupying Olds’ place in the lineup (witness Aura, Outlook, et al) of late. Has been a money pit since day one (or had been at the time GM decided a brand needed axing), and was the company’s newest brand, a lasting brainfart of Roger “and Me” Smith. Oldsmobile, by contrast, was the oldest surviving American auto nameplate, with a history of style, innovation and value. Then again, with the way they were dumping the core, time-honored nameplates (88, 98, Cutlass) and warping their replacements beyond recognition (logo and all), it’s like the assclowns on the 14th floor we’re trying to kill Olds by driving away it’s core buyer base (which, admittedly, did have a fair bit of overlap with Buick and/or Cadillac). Did malaise-era products like the 350 diesel, “corporate powerplants” and products like the FWD Omegas, Firenzas and hunchback Cutlasses damage the brand’s reputation? Sure. But I don’t think things were beyond repair. Clearly Rabid Rick and Maximum Bob’s predecessors (Ron Zarella in particular) never heard the saying “If it ain’t broke…”
*end rant*
What a nut job.
Cut Saturn instead? Saturns were the only cars GM had that were actually different. Well… at one time they were different.
Saturn’s problem is that they weren’t different enough. I know a few people that bought them and were extremely disappointed with the reliability, durability and maintenance cost. They now drive Hondas and Toyotas (let’s see, Accords, Camrys, Corollas a 4Runner and a CR-V). Saturn was GM’s last chance to keep those people and GM blew it.
Saturn was a great brand identity (practical little cars that aren’t afraid to be different to deliver great value, e.g., plastic skins, list pricing) with crappy execution.
whitenose:
August 30th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
“Nemphre: at the time, there was a case to be made that Buick and/or Pontiac should have gotten the knife instead. ”
TomAnderson:
August 31st, 2007 at 1:13 am
“whitenose: Pontiac and/or Buick would have indeed made better sacrificial lambs,…”
There were only two reasons that Olds was killed. One was the declining sales and position in the marketplace that everyone acknowledges. But the other real reason it was Olds and not another division was that Olds had the least free standing dealerships in the GM family, less than a hundred if memory serves me right. ALL the other Olds dealers were part of multi-line dealerships. Remember, GM had to compensate the dealers somehow. The standalones would get the most compensation, either a LOT of money or a different line of cars to sell (like Saturn). Can you imagine trying to payoff all the Saturn dealerships, all of which I believe are standalones? Not-gonna-happen.com.
windswords –
I always wondered why most Olds were standalones as opposed to the other dealerships. I guess because back in the day an Olds dealer did enough numbers with just one brand?
blautens,
Actually it was the opposite, most of them were not. It’s a lot easier to kill a brand that shares floorspace in a dealer with 2 or 3 other brands. Try doing that with hundreds of stand alone dealers. That’s why DCX had no problem (comparatively speaking) with Plymouth because there were no standalone Plymouth dealerships. They were paired with Chrysler, or Chrysler and Jeep, or Chrysler and Dodge, or Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge.
Guess that was my limited south Florida experience…all the Olds dealers here were stand alones.
it’s very sad to hear a man so distraught. you can hear his voice crack during the interview. it’s the classic case of the big guys (GM) making bad moves and squashing the little guys just because they can. big power and money often times leads to deception and greed. it sounds like GM thought their power and money wouldn’t end, and made some VERY bad decisions. GM lost sight of what they needed to do to stay on top.
no matter what retail business you’re talking about (and selling cars = retail), closing down 2,800 locations (all Olds dealerships) is NOT going to help gain GM customers and market share. it’s easy to see how GM opened up the door for foreign competition whether it was the Japanese or German automakers.
it’s also VERY sick for people to listen to such a story and poke fun at the man, especially after hearing about his wife’s illness, as Blautens pointed out. Sherman Lin has it right, “no one in his position could believe that GM could be so incompetent and stupid.” with 2,800 dealerships closing, tens of thousands of american lives had to be hurt – this is not a laughing matter at all.