With rumors of another GM executive shakeup flying thick and fast, we expected a downright miserable sales performance from The General in February. By the year-over-year numbers [full release here, sales numbers in PDF format here], there’s no such flow of red tape, as GM’s four “core brands” gained 32 percent and total sales (including Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn) were up 11.5 percent. But that’s in comparison to February of 2009, when GM’s sales were down 53 percent from the year earlier. In short, GM appears to have hit bottom in terms of volume, but it still has yet to recover to anything close to 2008 volume. (Read More…)
Motor Trend reports that former PT Cruiser stylist Brian Nesbitt has been relieved of his duties as the head of Cadillac, ending GM’s post-bankruptcy experiment of putting a stylist in charge of an entire division. But MT figures that Nesbitt’s ouster isn’t as simple as a failure to perform; according to their sources, the firing was political.
The shakeup has major implications for Bob Lutz’s future at GM. He hired Nesbitt away from Chrysler earlier last decade and made sure there was a place for the PT Cruiser designer at post-bankruptcy GM. Nesbitt’s departure would indicate Lutz’s role as one of three GM vice chairmen has diminished to almost nothing… Clearly, [recently-promoted sales boss and President of North American ops Mark Reuss] is putting his own team together, and it doesn’t include Nesbitt, who was posed as the aesthetic face of the Cadillac luxury division.
Meanwhile, at the Geneva Auto Salon, Bob Lutz confirmed that he is probably on the way out.
We at TTAC, (well, me, only) have said that since everyone is raining a storm down on Toyota other recalls are slipping by without equal scrutiny. So when I read this article, I thought it fair, in the interests of journalism, to blog it. Not because of who it is, but the reasoning around it.
GM throws in the towel. And throws a lot of (your, well, our) money after Opel. GM will invest a total of €1.9b into the German patient, says Das Handelsblatt today after talking to Bob Lutz. Nick Reilly confirmed the message today, and said the money can flow as paid in capital and loans from the mother-ship. It finally dawned on GM that European governments are just stringing them along until Opel runs out of money – again. (Read More…)
Cadillac relaunched [release in PDF format here] its perennially disappointing European effort last week, revealing that a new sales and import firm, Cadillac Europe, had been formed. Why would Cadillac double down on a market that it until recently blighted with its ill-advised Opel Vectra-based BLS (which bizarrely still appears at the cadillaceurope.com website)? Caddy boss Brian Nesbitt explains:
Europe is an important market for Cadillac. Re-establishing distribution of our premium offerings is good news for those who seek import exclusiveness
Except that Europe and America are fundamentally different markets, with different tastes in luxury. Unless the Cadillac boffins have some kind of alternate explanation for why Lexus sells like hotcakes in the US, but can barely move the needle in Europe and is resorting to Euro-specific models to make headway. But apparently success in the US luxury market is just a few European sales away. Really.
Shortly after emerging from bankruptcy last July, when GM’s sales were still showing few signs of recovery, then-Sales and Marketing boss Mark LaNeve had his marketing responsibilities stripped about a week before monthly sales came out. In a matter of months, LaNeve was out the door. Sales and marketing were rolled together again when Susan Docherty took over for LaNeve, but over the weekend it was once again stripped away, in one of the first signs that Docherty’s star is no longer rising at GM. And lets go ahead and start assuming that February sales must be looking fairly grim, because the only real explanation given to Automotive News [sub] is that
The shakeup shows that Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre is impatient to boost sales and for consumers to appreciate what he believes is the high quality of GM vehicles. When he became chief executive in December, Whitacre said his sales and marketing team would need to show results quickly.
The perception gap claims another victim! But Docherty’s downgrade is Mark Reuss’s gain. The former Holden boss, now GM’s President of North American operations, will assume the sales responsibilities, leaving Docherty time to focus on the marketing side and polish up her resumé.
It’s been over ten days since GM’s Bob Lutz took to the local papers to complain that GM’s executives are “way, way, way underpaid,” and its still been less than a week since Ed Whitacre’s $9m compensation package was announced but politicians are only now starting to sit up and take notice. Barney Frank (D-MA) can usually be counted on to give greedy CEOs a good dressing-down, but at this point, Mama Frank seems to have given up on the government-owned automaker’s execs. The Detroit News reports Frank’s mild disappointment thusly:
“I don’t think Mr. Whitacre was going to go do something else” if he got paid less, Frank told reporters this afternoon after a hearing. “He’s having a good time there. I think they way overcompensate themselves.”
A “person familiar with the situation” tells the Wall Street Journal [sub] that GM is looking into two new offers for the HUMMER brand after a deal that would have sold the brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong collapsed. No word on who these two firms are, where they are located, or what they’re smoking to make them interested in the dinosaur brand. The rest of the WSJ piece bemoans the opacity of the Chinese Government’s deal approval system, and details how approval hurdles have scuttled deals in other industries, much to the frustration of American firms. Of course, if GM had listened to TTAC’s Bertel Schmitt, they’d know that:
All joint ventures need to get government approval. However, the Chinese government wants its car industry with more than 100 players to consolidate to a more manageable number. Beijing wants to see four big ones and four smaller ones. What Beijing definitely doesn’t want is more car manufacturers. So instead of saying outright “no,” Beijing is letting the deal get entangled in red tape.
After a lot of to and fro, GM today officially gave up on the Hummer deal. Reuters reports that “General Motors Co will wind down its Hummer SUV line after failing to complete a deal to sell the brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co.”
“We are disappointed that the deal with Tengzhong could not be completed,” John Smith, GM’s outgoing vice president of corporate planning and alliances, said in a statement. This is the last in a row of failed deals Smith misengineered. (Read More…)
As China’s new year (that of the tiger) came around, China’s biggest automaker SAIC Motor Corp has won regulatory approval to acquire the crucial 1 percent stake in Shanghai GM, Shanghai Daily reports today via Gasgoo. The matter has been officially filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday. It’s official now. General Motors officially has been relegated to minority shareholder in its key venture in the world’s largest auto market. SAIC is now calling the shots. (Read More…)
As connoisseurs will certify, daily Hummers are good for you. The Chinese agree and keep us supplied with the delicious staple of GM (and we don’t mean genetically modified) food.
“Not so” said Shanghai Daily in the early Chinese morning hours of Wednesday. One of their sources said that “the chances of having the deal approved had dropped to 50-50,” another source of the Shanghai paper remained defiant: “Tengzhong has not given up hope yet to win government approval.”
This (U.S.) morning, the Wall Street Journal weighed in on the matter. Their Beijing correspondent reconnected with her “person close to the situation” after the source had returned from the Chinese New Year holidays. That impeccable source reported that “Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. has been told that the Chinese government won’t clear its deal to buy General Motors Co.’s Hummer unit.”
Kicking Tires calls these “the first official photos of the production version” of the next-generation Chevrolet Aveo. They show a subcompact that’s definitely less showcar-ish than the Aveo RS concept from NAIAS, but is still in the computer-generated “uncanny valley” between the realistic and real. Or maybe I’m just getting used to the idea of a halfway-appealing Aveo.
Not many in Colorado, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette, which reports that the Motor Trend Certified Advantage [yes, really] network is joining Sears in mopping up culled dealers. What GM’s pump-em-up video leaves out: the fine print explaining how the new-look dealership renovations will be paid for.
We are delighted – Saab’s future is now secure. From today we will be concentrating all of our efforts into reviving Saab and transforming it into a sustainable and profitable company with the confidence to be bold. We will reinforce the emotional experience between Saab drivers and their cars and we will focus on Saab’s historical strengths in the fields of independent thinking, aircraft heritage, ecological performance and motorsport.
Through this acquisition we add approximately 15 euros per share in equity and 60 euros of assets. With a well funded business plan in place we are looking forward to working with Saab’s management on the realization of that plan and bringing exciting new products to our customers. Real Saabs, Saab Saabs.
Spyker CEO Victor Muller celebrates the official transfer of ownership of Saab [full release in PDF format here]. GM’s release can be found here.
Although the Chinese government takes much of February off for New Year festivities, GM’s deal to sell HUMMER to Sichuan Tengzhong has exactly one week left before a self-imposed deadline for completion arrives. The deal is being held up by China’s Commerce Ministry which has publicly said that it wants the Chinese auto industry to consolidate and become “greener,” two goals that are severely at odds with Sichuan Tengzhong’s HUMMER aspirations. Now, the Financial Times reports that Tengzhong may be trying to pull an end-around on the Chinese government by pursuing a purchase via an offshore investment vehicle. This would (in theory) evade the requirement for the Commerce Ministry’s approval. In reality … (Read More…)
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