In the quarterly conference call to offer excuses discuss the latest financial report– the one where GM lost $3.5b in Q1— CFO Ray Young reassured someone that GM has no plans to kill any of their eight North American brands in North America. Advertising Age [sub] reports he's standing behind the recent reorganization that divvied-up the brands amongst four marketing chiefs. Young called it it "the right way to go." However, the CFO termed their North American operation's losses last quarter as "unacceptable." (Yeah! Someone should be fired! Oh wait…) GM's North American market share is now down to 21.7 percent, compared to 22.5 percent a year ago. In the global market, The General's share dropped 0.5 percent to 12.5 percent. Without North America's numbers, their share went up 0.1 percent to 9.6 percent. So, instead of addressing the problems at GMNA, the General will "beef up" its overseas activities and put "our foot on the accelerator… and jam it through to the floor" in emerging markets like Russia and India. They'll probably succeed, too. After all, it's a lot easier to peddle utility grade beef to someone who's starving than to discerning diners in the restaurant district.
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Frank – Agree with your analysis.
Excuses only sound good to the person making them.
I dont understand why you call GM’s overseas products crap (utility grade beef). Have you even driven the cars you are referring to? Doubt it. Be nice to see some objective reporting instead of just more cheerleading and pandering.
I didn’t call their overseas products “crap.” However, to keep the prices low, the cars they design for “emerging” markets like India and Russia – where they’e going to focus a lot of their energy because they know they’ll sell cars there – are inferior in engineering, safety, build quality (to some extent) and emission controls to those they build for more established markets like Europe or the U.S. The Chevy Spark shown wouldn’t last a year on the U.S. market unless they did a serious number of upgrades on it. Utility grade beef is still edible, although there are very few in this country who would buy it.
GM’s european products are utility grade beef? That’s news to me.
ATTENTION EVERYONE:
I did NOT say anything about GM’s European models. Nowhere will you find any mention of Europe. If you read what I wrote, it’s talking about GM going full tilt after EMERGING MARKETS like RUSSIA and INDIA, where they do sell cars which are several grades below what the typical American or European customer would accept safety-wise and equipment-wise (and probably several other reasons).
I think if GM really wanted to recover, they should spin off N. American operations and just call themselves a European company. Perhaps they could keep Cadillac if they really wanted to.
Discerning diners? If you’re referring to the U.S. or Europe, you gotta be joking! I’d never buy some of the “Utility Grade Beef” sold by the coveted Asian manufacturers here to the unsuspecting masses!!
The Smart car is popular ya know!
i think “utility grade beef” is a good description of the Chevrolet badged Daewoos sold in Europe.
I’d put a lot of what is sold in NA by the domestics into the same category.
God Wagoner is good at what he does. That is to lead GM down the path to corporate suicide. In NA, throw away money on niche stuff like the G8 and Camaro with gas prices so predictably rising while the Cobalt needs 3-4 more mpg to really compete with the Civic. And then in the so called emerging market, tarnish the good Chevrolet name with the Daewoo junk. Interesting reading on Edmunds under the forums where Aveo customers wonder what warranty coverage they really have. Seems the 5 yr/100k warranty excluded the timing belt (and related damage if it failed) after the first scheduled maintenance of 30k. So if the belt failed at 35k or whatever, was the warranty valid or not? Nobody from GM seemed willing to say. Somehow I don’t think this is going to cut it against Honda/Toyota. So give the emerging market folks some time to learn about GM quality, and we’ll see what happens to GM market share there. But hey, with space travel moving right along, maybe the next emerging market will be Mars where people haven’t experienced GM quality.
End US auto manufacturing and only import?
Seems the 5 yr/100k warranty excluded the timing belt (and related damage if it failed) after the first scheduled maintenance of 30k. So if the belt failed at 35k or whatever, was the warranty valid or not? Nobody from GM seemed willing to say
If they explicitly excluded the timing belt changing at 35k , then is your Baby. Just like brake pads, the useable, wearable stuff is not included. Mnd you if the car sells for 100 grand then they will send Taxi to pick u up on service days too.
A lot of these new cars owners dont know enuf about cars, then anything looks polished up could be a very good car.
They have to wait for TTAC to be printed in there own language.
GM has to go after emerging markets. The clock is ticking on GM it will just be a matter of time before the Chinese and Indians realize Toyota and Honda have better products.
Relative to GMs North American stuff, the GM Euro cars are pretty good. Relative to other European cars they are at best average.
Implying that emerging markets are willing to settle for “utility grade beef” is an insult to emerging markets. Since when were American customers “discerning diners in the restaurant district” and emerging markets “starving”?? Spend some time in those markets and you’ll realize that those customers are just as demanding as American customers, if not more so. The menu and ingredients have to be different, because the tastes and requirements are different.
“You’d better buy that Suburban now, because there are starving customers in China who would do anything for one of them.”