When, a few days ago, I wrote my rant about GM wanting to be like Apple, I did a bad job. My point was not that GM can’t be like Apple because it doesn’t have an aluminum unibody, my point was not GM’s number of platforms, my point was not that GM wants to marginalize Opel by being Apple, my point was not that Ford is closer to being Apple, my point was not that Sony and its “Sony timer” will never be like Apple, my point was not that Apple is like BMW.

Apparently, I failed to get my point across.

My point was that any CEO or marketing manager who wants his company to be like another company should abdicate and apply for a job at that other company. Or that he should be taken out and shot, in an act of mercy killing. (Read More…)

Volt owners gather before their parade down Woodward

Photos courtesy of Cars In Depth

As part of the festivities surrounding the Woodward Dream Cruise, GM organized a parade down Woodward and back up again made up of 50 Chevy Volts driven to the event by their owners, at their own expense, from around the country. As far as car company promotional events go it was fairly low key (I was asked not to publicize the pre-parade reception for the owners) but it was clearly a high priority item for GM. The Volt marketing team was out in force and they brought in NASCAR champions Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, who are racing at Michigan International Speedway this weekend, to wave green flags at the start of the Volt parade. Gordon and Johnson both own Chevy dealerships and they both personally own Chevy Volts. They race for Rick Hendricks, who owns quite a few Chevy (and other GM) stores himself. There were news teams from at least two of the Detroit tv stations and a satellite truck that I believe was used for a national network or cable interview of the NASCAR drivers. GM also brought out a number of pace cars from their private stash of Camaros, Corvettes and even one Chevy SSR that paced races at Indianapolis and Daytona. There was also the ZR1 that set a lap record for production cars at the Nurburgring. Marketing being what it is, the parade also included 2 squadrons of Chevy’s most recent new product, the Camaro convertible and the subcompact Sonic. There were 100 cars in total, one for each year in Chevy’s current centennial.

There were t-shirts and baseball caps for the guests, and the Volt owners each got a nice die cast model of their car, but the Volt owners weren’t there for the swag or for autographs, though they eagerly accepted both. The Volt owners were there because they really, really, really like their cars.

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The Detroit News’s David Shepardson reports that GM has requested the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging rear-suspension problems on 2007-8 model-year Impalas, on the grounds that

“New GM did not assume liability for old GM’s design choices, conduct or alleged breaches of liability under the warranty, and its terms expressly preclude money damages,” the response says.

The suit “is trying to saddle new GM with the alleged liability and conduct of old GM.”

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If I would have a dollar , euro, yen for each time a marketer says “we want to be the next Apple,” I’d be rich by now and could stop writing. (Read More…)

Good news for Opel workers: They could all get Chevys, and GM CEO Dan Akerson won’t sell them down the river, to China, to Korea, or god forbid to Wolfsburg. “We would never give Opel away. Opel contributes to our global size and is not for sale, end of discussion,” Akerson told Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland. An unambiguous statement. Opel workers would have loved to hear it a bit earlier. But better late than Hyundai.

Akerson had more news. Some good. Some, well, you decide … (Read More…)

GM knows where the growth is: In the emerging markets, BRICs and beyond. GM announced today it will “invest $150 million in the reactivation of its Bekasi manufacturing facility in West Java, Indonesia.” (Read More…)

“In attempts to boost profitability, GM wants to cut the number of vehicle platforms by half over the next decade and consolidate the number of engines,” reports the DetN. That’s the good news. The bad news is that “GM’s executives admit the automaker continues to have an inefficient manufacturing network, weak supplier relations and too many variations in the types of engines and vehicle underpinnings it uses to build cars and trucks globally.” If the DetN says it, then it must be true. Putting platforms and engines on a diet is seen as the cure. (Read More…)

Having been asked by a certain newspaper to review the new book “American Wheels, Chinese Roads: The Story of General Motors in China [more info on that review coming soon], I’ve been spending my quiet moments over the last week or so looking into GM’s Chinese operations. The book’s author, Michael Dunne, documents GM’s rise in the Middle Kingdom from the perspective of a well-informed outsider, revealing just how delicate one of GM’s best-performing global maneuvers really was. But after following the rise of GM in China, Dunne notes the December 2009 announcement that GM was selling a 1% stake in its Shanghai-GM (SGM) joint venture to its Chinese partner SAIC (for the paltry sum of $85m no less), arguing that GM had made a dangerous leap of necessity. This sale, implies Dunne, could well have been the tipping point that leads to GM being surpassed by its erstwhile junior (in size, technology and global reach) partner, SAIC. And, in the words of “one GM executive who used to work in China,” GM would need

good luck getting that back.

But, back in June, GM CEO Dan Akerson told GM’s shareholder meeting that he wants to do just that, saying

We have an option to buy that 1 percent. It’s our intention to exercise that.

With Akerson’s announcement, the mystery of GM’s “golden share” sale deepened. At first the question was simply “why would GM sell its 1%?” but now there’s another mystery: why would GM want it back? After some digging, it seems that we are now able to resolve the first mystery, and report why GM sold its one percent. But the whole deal is still surrounded by several layers of mystery which conceal whether GM will in fact be able to regain its 50-50 partnership in SGM, why it would want to and whether its gambit was ultimately worthwhile. And given how important China has been (and continues to be) to GM’s global business, this is definitely an issue that GM- and industry-watchers will want to better understand.

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When should a redesigned car get a new name? Whenever the old one wasn’t a success? Or virtually never? Can car companies count on the excellence of a new car to reverse whatever damage was done to the public perception of the model name in the past?

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GM China and its joint ventures sold 173,398 vehicles in China during the month of July, “as Shanghai GM and GM’s Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac brands all set sales records for the month,” GM’s press release says. Nonetheless, GM’s China sales in July were down 1.8 percent from the same month last year. Now how did that happen? Why should you care? Why should anybody care? (Read More…)

GM has announced its Q2 earnings [Analyst slides in PDF here], and the firm has recorded a healthy $2.5b profit for the quarter on strong North American performance and an end to losses from the European Opel division. In fact, on an EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) basis, all of GM’s global divisions were in the black last quarter, although GM Europe and GM South America both recorded modest $100m gains and GMIO (which includes the lucrative Chinese market) recorded a $600m EBIT. The powerhouse continues to be GM North America, which recorded $2.2b in EBIT, continuing North America’s post-bailout importance as the driver of GM’s financial results. Globally, a $600m reduction in EBIT due to costs and “other” was offset by the same amount of gains in volume/mix, while pricing added a billion dollars to overall EBIT. And though fleet sales were up in North America, incentives for the quarter appear to have hit record lows. [Hit the jump for global deliveries and market share/fleet data, via GM’s financial highlights release].

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According to Germany’s usually well informed AUTO BILD, Korea’s Hyundai either did or still does cast longing eyes on struggling Opel. Opel is on Hyundai’s horizon, literally: Hyundai’s German tech center in Rüsselsheim is only a few miles away from Opel. “Hyundai is growing faster than any other automaker. They are desperately seeking new engineers at the Hyundai tech center,” writes AUTO BILD, “and the plant in Czech Nošovice cannot be expanded further. Opel with thousands of well trained engineers, precious EV know-how (Ampera) and underutilized plants would be a great fit.” And this is how the latest car-cliffhanger started … (Read More…)

Better late than never: After refusing for months to comment on rumors that Opel might be up for sale, and after having been lambasted from his own workers up to Germany’s government, GM CEO Dan Akerson said the magic words: “We don’t comment on speculation — and there has been a lot of speculation — but I will say this: Opel is not for sale.”

Akerson made the remarks at a GM plant while celebrating the official launch of labor talks with the UAW, Reuters reports. (Read More…)

Don’t freak out about 3D. To use YouTube’s 3D player, start the video, then pause and click on the “3D” icon that will appear in the menu bar. You can either turn off 3D  and watch in 2D/mono or select from a variety of 3D formats. Video courtesy of Cars In Depth

Either it’s the blogosphere’s version of playing telephone, or General Motors has committed itself to producing the Segway based two passenger networkable EV pod that GM calls EN-V. The EN-V is seen as a solution to driving congestion and safety in densely populated urban areas. It can be driven or can operate autonomously, in network with other EN-Vs, with electronic nannies preventing accidents and protecting pedestrians. GM’s been giving the three EN-Vs that it’s made so far a workout, visiting expos, car shows and engineering conventions, giving out test rides. But does GM actually have any firm plans to build the thing? It depends on who you ask…

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With CAFE negotiations heating up, safety regulation coming down the pipe and the UAW pushing for another round of “retooling” loans, GM is upping its profile in the nation’s capitol with a new ad campaign aimed at policymakers. The DetN reports

A Washington-based spokesman for the automaker, Greg Martin, said the effort is to make sure policy makers “are aware of GM’s contribution to our nation’s economic and competitive strength.”

GM has a broader story than just profits and sales, he said.

“GM has started an ad campaign in select Washington publications because there’s more to GM’s resurgence than just increased sales and profitability,” Martin said. “GM is also an auto company investing heavily in America’s future, creating new jobs and inventing solutions and technologies that will make a real difference in energy and safety.”

But the waves of coming auto-related regulations may not actually have motivated the ad so much as the fact that the government is likely to sell off its remaining 26% share in GM by the end of the year (if not by the end of the Summer), and they’re facing an $11b loss at current stock prices. By emphasizing that the auto bailout created a positive corporate citizen rather than just a newly-profitable company, GM likely hopes to convince the government that the political downsides of taking a big loss on The General was ultimately worth it. And that’s an important PR step in the short term as well, as CAFE negotiations are giving rise to bailout-tinged rhetorical attacks on the automaker. For example, Ralph Nader tells the Freep

We give GM billions of dollars, and what do taxpayers get in return? Opposition to a policy that will clearly save them money and give them better cars,