That’s right, the CEO in charge of Government Motors. (Okay, don’t really ask me why I think I’m qualified; let’s just suspend belief for a few minutes shall we?) So what would I do? First, I’d insist on a new wardrobe for every person at every level. Gone are all the suits for the white-collar workers. Factory workers can’t wear jeans and t-shirts or whatever. Nope, everyone in the company now wears the GM uniform, kind of like the military. The new GM garb consists of coveralls in blue and white with a GM logo on the back, and each worker gets a name tag to pin on the front. Ranks are determined by stripes, bars and stars, just like the Army. As CEO, I get four stars on the shoulder epaulets. And, of course, there’d be a “dress uniform” for outside events.

Crazy? Perhaps. But everyone needs to get on board that the car business is like a war where the fight begins with winning the hearts and minds of fickle customers. It’s not just the folks at Dearborn down the road with whom we do battle, but it’s a worldwide onslaught of talented engineers, designers and workers from other car companies that want to sell their products to my customers. GM needs to defend the little bit of turf it’s got left and conquer new ground, especially with those folks who won’t even consider a GM product at any price.

Next, I’d fire all of the advertising agencies that work on the GMNA business. Frankly, you can’t really blame the agencies for the lousy messages of the past; it’s more the fault of GM’s executives for giving them little to work with to start and corporate blandness requirements second. A bad car still sucks no matter how good the advertising might be.

C’mon, what could anyone really come up with creative to say about the Aveo? And how chicken-shit was it for GM to not allow that hot woman driving the CTS with her fancy high heeled strappy shoes to say the truth that her CTS does turn her on?

So I’d look all around the country for the most creative, daring, and provocative ad agencies—and I’d pick one for each of the four remaining brands. Different car/truck lines need different messages. Of course, this begs the questions of exactly what are the four brands and what do they stand for? So I’m going to define them for everyone once and forever.

Chevrolet: the mass market brand for every man, woman, and teenager in America offering a full line of cars and trucks. Mass market means Walmart, Sears, and Penney’s shoppers.

Buick and GMC: the affordable luxury brand of cars and crossovers. More upscale than Chevrolet with better finishes, upgraded powertrains, and refined NVH characteristics. Think Nordstrom.

Cadillac: let’s get back to its roots and go for the “Standard of the World.”  The most technologically advanced, powerful, and stylish vehicles. The brand has to become more of an adjective rather than a noun. Harrod’s in London for example. Everyone comes to see the merchandise, but few can afford to make a habit of shopping there. Yet, everyone buys something.

Third, I wouldn’t hire a single MBA except perhaps in the finance department to deal with Wall Street (’cause we’ll be back there soon enough). But finance will be a dead-end department for advancement to the top since a skilled finance guy can’t sell a car to a Grandma in Peoria if he tried. I want kids from the state schools, particularly engineers and designers. Guys and gals who got their hands dirty tinkering with cars or drawing them in high school.

But the biggest challenge still will be getting skeptical consumers out of their Toyotas and Hondas. There’s only one way—and that’s to put an American face (mine) in front of the public all the time telling them they’ve got to try a GM product.

And most importantly, tell them the truth. Let them hear from the CEO of GM about the particulars of each model in the line up. (OK, I won’t talk about how really awful that tin-can Aveo is, or that the Cobalt is a warmed-over Cavalier. But we’ve got some good stuff too that really does compete with the Japanese, so that’s what I’ll say.)

I’d personally go out and visit all my big suppliers and thank them for standing by GM even though we tried to screw every last nickel out of them in the past. That’s now history. Everyone needs to play nice and profit isn’t a dirty word. But we want their best efforts with higher quality controls than before even if it costs another nickel or two. Sure, they’ve got to be cost-competitive but we’re going to put a premium on quality, on-time delivery, and superior engineering. Just like the Japanese.

Finally, I’d get my dealers behind me. A car company can’t win without its dealers going whole-hog on the brand and the products. I’d put a stop to practices that make no sense, like loading the channel up with cars and then blowing them out at huge discounts. And I’d put more money into the regional dealer ad groups. Let the dealers tell the story to their buyers about the new GM. They’re a creative bunch with money at risk—if they win, we win. It’s just that simple.

So that’s my strategy for GM in the USA. Basic blocking and tackling, no miracles needed. I really want to pay the taxpayers back for the money we got, and I certainly want GM buyers to take pride in their vehicles. It’s time to get in the game of making and selling cars, and it’s a game GM can’t afford to lose.

Back in the late ‘90s, Hollywood unleashed a barrage of light-hearted, cookie-cutter teen movies. The gist: quasi-geek exists just outside the fringe of the high school “in crowd.” He’s intrinsically smart, casually cool, but socially a bit awkward. He’s followed by legions of adoring and affable nerds, cast in the shadows of the popular conformists. Inevitably, our geek has his eyes on the prettiest girl in school and a thirst for leaping the social chasm to popularity. Predictably, this is accomplished through a bit of dumb luck, by selling his soul through transformational makeover, and by alienating those who supported him. Allow me to introduce the latest geek-turned-sellout: the 2010 Subaru Outback.

A brand is a promise to a consumer. When a brand’s products fail to live up to the consumer’s expectations (i.e. the promise in THEIR mind), they are right never to trust it again. Why should a screwed customer give GM another chance? We’re not talking about sewing machines here. An automobile is the average consumer’s second most expensive purchase (after their house). They have every right—indeed an obligation to the people who depend on them—to err on the side of caution. To AVOID risking the money upon which their family relies. I repeat: if they’re satisfied with their current car company, they would do their family a disservice to put their money at risk.

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Apparently, there’s no word for “yes” in Japanese. “Hai” means “I heard what you just said” not “I agree completely and will act accordingly.” By the same token, the word “no” lacks the Western sense of finality. So when Toyota used the opportunity of New GM’s birth to signal the media that it may close its GM joint venture in California, that means it may close its GM joint venture in California. Which is more than saying it definitely won’t shutter the UAW-staffed NUMMI plant, and less than saying it definitely will shutter the UAW-staffed NUMMI plant. Let’s check the official inscrutability index: “GM’s decision to abandon NUMMI and discontinue its production of the Pontiac Vibe have prompted a set of difficult and complex decisions for Toyota,” the Japan-based automaker said in a news release. “Under the current business circumstances, Toyota regrettably must also consider taking necessary steps to dissolve the joint venture.” Reading between the lines, NUMMI is toast. Unless Toyota decides otherwise.

The worst recession in half a century will be prolonged as consumers see their jobs go away and their home prices head south, economists Nouriel Roubini and Robert Shiller warn on Bloomberg. The University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment fell by more than forecast to 64.6 from 70.8 in the prior month. And it may be time for some foreign automakers to evacuate crumbling Cartago, their countrymen caution.

Suzuki reported a precipitous 78 percent drop in US unit sales in June. Their first-half decline was 60 percent, the market’s worst. Mitsubishi is down 51 percent this year. Faltering since 2003, Mitsubishi doesn’t have far to fall. Mitsubishi “doesn’t make cars that are hot-sellers in the U.S.,” said CSM Worldwide analyst Masatoshi Nishimoto with polite Nipponese understatement. Sayonara?

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Evening time. Time for conversations, drinks, jokes and . . . spreadsheets? Apparently so. I’ve caught this nasty computerized bug lately. The symptoms are harder to shake than swine flu and almost as appealing. It’s figuring out my ‘cost to own’ for a variety of cars. The goal: get my cost down to 10 cents a mile. Three hours and too much wine later, I wondered. “Can it really happen in this world of $3 gas?” With purchase price, insurance, gas, opportunity cost, maintenance, repairs, and government fees aplenty, not to mention a junker selling price with inflation to boot, I wasn’t quite sure. In fact my head was spinning. The final answer?

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Bloomberg reports on Toyota’s pickle vis-à-vis Fremont, California-based NUMMI. New GM is leaving its NUMMI ownership share in the hands of Old GM. Thus, Old GM and Toyota together own NUMMI in a 50/50 joint venture. Old GM will be selling off its moribund assets over a period of a year or more as the long slow process of liquidating the discards and paying creditors pennies on the dollar plays out. (Old GM is looking like an economic stimulus program for a small band of lawyers, accountants and realtors.)

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Commenter j_slez (who compiled GM and Toyota monthly sales since 2004 for us already) writes:

I saw the call for a log-scale GM plot, and since the change only took a minute I threw that together, even though I’m not a fan of it personally.  It does help separate the lower-selling brands.  Part of the point of the original is that they’re all low-selling.  I replaced Pontiac with all of the “Old GM” brands – it doesn’t make much difference really.

Then I did Toyota.  They’ve got a bit of a dive themselves of late.

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I remember when I was 16 years old, one of my friend’s dad had a near-new Toyota Celica All-Trac. It was gorgeous. The black paint was svelte and flawless. The leather pristine. It was a true work of art. Except it had one tiny little flaw on the vehicle. The VIN was not ‘authentic.’ It had been taken off another vehicle from ‘far far away.’ This was in the bad old days where odometer rollbacks (which still happen) and washed titles (ditto) were still common. Today? Well, I’ll put it to you this way, even a finance company with as many computers as NASA was screwed seven ways from Sunday by a bunch of Nigerians using an old lady’s information. The clunker auditors are going to have to keep their eyes REAL open in this ‘information age’ to catch these snakes . . . and it won’t be easy. Here’s just a small slither of stealth that can happen just on the trade-in side of the equation.

What can happen once a vehicle is traded in? An awful lot. For starters it can be sent abroad. Really. Really. Cheap. It got so bad that the Mexican government (one of many destinations) decided to allow only ten-year-old cars to be registered that came from Yankeeland. It didn’t matter in the end though what the government’s ‘official’ position was. The business of bribery continues to this day on both sides of the fence, and cars found their way into the system regardless of what the laws were. By the way, Mexico is just one place where a ‘clunker’ won’t be missed.

What does this mean for cash for clunkers? It means there isn’t much stopping a recycling center from stripping off the VIN’s. Giving the requisite pictures and evidence to whoever needs it, and making private arrangements to send the vehicle outside the US. The percentage profit would be somewhere between a title pawn and meth distribution, and the governments ability to track it down through paperwork alone would be zero. So long as the VINs match, the people are genuine buyers, and the people involved keep their yaps shut, it will just be a nice four figured profit per vehicle. No questions asked. But this is just really a very small slice of ‘trade-in’ paradise. A far bigger one?

Open up your local newspaper and look under the ‘auction’ or ‘impound’ section. You’ll see hundreds of vehicles with their VIN numbers displayed in all their glory. Most of these cars come from folks who don’t want or need their clunker anymore. They may be as poor as dirt, taking drugs, out of work, or in jail, but they still technically own it. The price to buy one of their clunkers at a public auction? If it’s fit for the crusher, the cost today is about $100 due to cheap commodity prices. The prior owner has to be notified before the sale and this information is often in turn given to the new owner of the vehicle.

Many of these vehicles are never put into a new name. If it’s got even a breath of light, it can be ‘flipped’ and sold with the paperwork intact. No questions asked and no profits traced. There is absolutely no auditing for the transfer of ownership in most states. Just the proceeds from the sale. With a very small level of computer knowledge (or bribery) you can also find out practically everything about the person.

Since ‘Cash for Clunkers’ doesn’t require that the person have insurance for the vehicle before trade-in, there’s no stoppage that can occur there. Big mistake. A lot of folks who get their vehicles sent to the impound/tow lots usually move, involuntarily, without a forwarding address. In turn a lot of apartment complexes will request the towing of a vehicle from their property if the vehicle has anything from an expired tag to an eviction.

You can get these car for almost nothing if you’re a professional, develop a Fake ID with a little help and monetary dispensation, buy the car using their identity, and simply have the government paperwork forwarded to a PO Box which can then secure the taxpayer largesse. It’s easy. Unless those who audit this operation can track the VIN’s status online, which is hard since a lot of the local papers aren’t given an online edition, everything will seem picture perfect to an auditor.

But there are ways to find this information out. One would be to target the audits based on income. If a person is only earning $15,000 a year and they’re buying a car for the same price, that would be a red flag. So would contacting the county government and finding out whether the vehicle was impounded at a certain point. Court orders and impounds require paper trails and most of them can be found in a minute’s time. There is also one very strong impediment to sending these cars out of the US. That would be to have the clunker sent ‘on-site’ to a salvage auction where it could be crushed in exchange for receiving the rebate.

If the auditors are positioned there and literally see the crushing of the car, it eliminates the possibility of the car being recycled somewhere else. The system would hardly be a fail-safe at this point. But it would be a start. In the next installment I’ll focus on the dealer.

TTAC Commentator bumpy ii is nothing if not persistent. When the member of TTAC’s Best and Brightest bumped into the most recent U.S. new car sales figures (June), he was determined to get all trendy on us. And so . . . Click here for a look back at the sales stats for every Toyota model back to January ’04. If another one of our OCD, I mean, B&B wants to share some statistical analysis, or put this into a more visual form, bring it on. As always, your editorial support is most appreciated. [farago@ttac.com] Next up: same thing, Old GM.

Cars.com tackles the tough question of domestic content in its latest “American Made Index,” and comes away with a surprising result: Toyota’s Camry is the most “American” car on the market. Of course, making these distinctions in a global industry is fraught with difficulty. Though percentage of domestic parts content is tracked by the NHTSA for American Automobile Labeling Act compliance (PDF), those numbers count US and Canadian parts as being “domestic”. So Cars.com has created its own list which requires US assembly, at least 75 percent US-sourced parts content, and factors in sales numbers because “they correlate to the number of U.S. autoworkers employed to build any given model and to build the parts that go into those same cars.” Taking out vehicles that are being canceled with no clear replacement, the following vehicles make up their top ten “most American” automobiles.

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Forget Kowalski’s white Challenger, forget Steve McQueen’s Porsche 917K, forget Burt Reynolds’ Trans Am. There’s one movie car that really matters to the twentysomething car enthusiast, and I’m driving a nearly perfect example at full boost up a winding road. After less than ten minutes, my passenger is tired of me rapid-firing quotes at her: “I owe you a ten-second car.” “This will dominate all.” “There’s all kinds of family, Brian, and that’s a choice you’re going to have to make.” Each time I floor the accelerator, there’s almost enough time to spit out another one of Dominic Toretto’s outstanding phrases (“I’M IN YOUR FACE!”) before the boost spools. When it does… watch out.

Consumers have a hard enough time keeping all the brands and nameplates in the US market straight; trying to keep track of the myriad suppliers that make up the bulk of the industry is nearly impossible. Even here on TTAC, our well-informed commentariat often throws up its hands at the first sign of supplier coverage. But the fortunes of suppliers to US auto firms have been fading for years now, as Detroit’s misery slides downhill through the various tiers of suppliers. And despite repeated calls for a supplier bailout (and their use as OEM bailout bait), aid has been either misappropriated or rejected. And the bankruptcies show no signs of slowing.

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There are some seriously mixed messages coming out of the NHTSA today, which perfectly illustrate what I like to call the tyranny of safety. On the one hand, the NHTSA announced today that overall traffic fatalities dropped by nearly ten percent in 2008, hitting the lowest levels per vehicle mile traveled since 1961. Estimates for the first quarter of 2009 show the high-single digit downward trend continuing into this year. In 2008, the NHTSA logged 1.27 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Which, based on the number of cars and the shoddy quality of driving one encounters in this country (sorry, it’s true), is a remarkable statistic. But, for safety nuts like SecTrans Ray LaHood, it’s not enough. “While the number of highway deaths in America has decreased, we still have a long way to go,” he tells his press release. And how are we going to go about protecting Americans from the lowest fatality rates since JFK was elected and the Beatles were still playing the Cavern? Gizmos, baby, gizmos.

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As evolutionary as the changes to Toyota’s third-generation Prius may seem on the surface, beneath the familiar sheetmetal lurks enough new technology to justify over 1,000 new patents. The Wall Street Journal reports that through three generations of the Prius, Toyota has generated over 2,000 patents on hybrid technology, half stemming from the latest generation alone. Toyota’s hybrid patent filing nearly doubles the number filed by Honda, its closest hybrid competitor. And the WSJ casts this “thicket of patents” as Toyota tightening its stranglehold on the hybrid market.

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