"We are undoing the mess we had in the 1980s when every brand had everything, they all looked the same and they were all priced the same." So says GM's Product Jeffe Bob Lutz, quoted in The Wall Street Journal. The winner of TTAC's first annual Bob Lutz award went on to say their brands are emerging with their own identity, with "Buick standing for American luxury, Cadillac for total luxury and Pontiac getting back to its quality built roots." So let's run down the GM lineup and see where they stand: Pontiac is selling Cobalts and Holdens. Saturn is selling Opels. Saab is selling TrailBlazers (with the ignition key between the seats). Buick, Saturn, GMC and Chevrolet are all selling the same CUV with overlapping prices. Saturn, Chevy and Pontiac are all selling the same mid-sized car at about the same price. Cadillac is selling squared-off Corvettes and blinged-out Avalanches and Tahoes. Everything GMC sells is duplicated in the Chevy lineup. They're talking about introducing a Chevy-priced "entry level" Cadillac. Yep. Looks to me like GM has a firm grip on their brand identities. Too bad they don't have a firm grip on reality.
Find Reviews by Make:
I think His Lutzness needs his meds upped.
I’m currently at work, bored out of my mind and I thank you, TTAC, from the bottom of my British heart for posting this, because after reading this, I promptly pissed myself laughing!
In the United States, Chevrolet is an everyday brand for everyday people. In the UK, it is an “economy” brand (re-badged Daewoos) while Vauxhall is the everyday brand. Chevrolet cheapened their brand, in Europe, by doing this.
If Lutz, believes that all brands are back on track, then I have some magic beans I’d like to sell to him…..
GM is so dead and Lutz crazy if they think this mess now has “fixed” the branding problems. It means this stupidity of overlap and badge engineering will continue until they are 6 foot under. Same old management, same old GM.
“We are undoing the mess we had in the 1980s when every brand had everything, they all looked the same and they were all priced the same.”
This has got to be a new entry for the next Lutz award.
Is this man serious? What planet did he just arrive in from? GM still is operating this very same way. Badge engineering is VERY much alive and well at GM!
Did he really say the 80’s, come on that was twenty years ago! If they are still working on something twenty years ago they have bigger issues then I thought, one woudl think this wuold have been solved years ago. Its no wonder they are in the mess they are in. It’s like GM is the titanic and Lutz is steering the ship, and we all know how that ended.
I wonder if someone should check the quality of the water supplied to RenCen. I would not be surprised if Jason Bourne is now on Toyota’s payroll and has managed to ‘spike’ the water pipe leading to the towers. If so, I wonder what is being added! Whatever it is, it seems to alter reality for anyone drinking it. How else could Bobus Maximus say these things while keeping a straight face? Does anyone have the phone number for Detroit’s Water Utility?
When will they bring back Geo?
@ SherbornSean
And Asuna?
What’s Asuna?
EDIT: Never mind looked it up, rebadged Isuzu Impulse, pretty cool looking. They sold this in the states? How come I never heard of, did it only sell for 1993?
This needs to be made into a movie (think Airplane) with Leslie Nielsen playing the part of Bob Lutz.
Bob certainly picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
…and don’t call me Shirley!
Lutz next job should be as a judge on American Idol. His grasp of reality is about as firm as Paula Abdul’s after Simon passes her a few pills.
@ Redbarchetta
I think Asunas were only sold in Canada.
They also sold a tracker clone.
Awwww c’mon…how could you guyz doubt the most brilliant man in the biz (just ask any fastlane psychophant).
“Pontiac getting back to its quality built roots” That statement must make the people who purchased Pontiacs the past many years feel warm and fuzzy about GM, they were sold cars built in an era of not “quality built roots”. And when exactly was the “quality built roots”
I still remember my sister in law having a small import called the Pontiac LeMans, what a joke.
Is this man serious? What planet did he just arrive in from? GM still is operating this very same way. Badge engineering is VERY much alive and well at GM!
Actually, his Lutzness has been spending a lot of time on Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, and will be visiting all the others in the next two years because GM has sponsored a new program at NASA to make all the planets just like earth so that GM can sell cars on all of them. Even Pluto will be getting an infusion of tropical beaches, courtesy of the General, using sand from Saudi Arabia. Lutz has said that they can use all that gas on the four outer gasbag planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) to run the cars, but it’s not clear that ExxonMobil is down with the program.
Redbarchetta :
“They sold this in the states? How come I never heard of, did it only sell for 1993?”
Look up “Geo Storm”. That was the version we had in the US. It was a neat little car.
Bring back the Chevy Sprint, and put the Aveo out to pasture.