R.I.P., GM

After the government’s bailout of Chrysler in 1979 – a then-mind-boggling $1.5 billion undertaking -- Lee Iaccoca famously said, “If you can find a better car, buy it.” Subsequent droves of prospective GM buyers have heeded this trenchant advice, and acted accordingly. And so GM, underwater to the staggering tune of $90 billion, has finally tossed in the towel.

But in all the reportage of GM’s bankruptcy, precious little is being said of a root cause of the debacle. This is not, as might be thought, anything so abstract as brand identity dilution, or as arcane as GM’s wage/benefits competitive disadvantage, or as simply boneheaded as hiring gumshoes to dig up dirt on Ralph Nader, although all have contributed to The General’s demise No, this cause of GM’s decline from over half of the U.S. auto market to something under a fifth and a share price that won’t buy a cup of coffee is simply that car buyers, to an increasingly large extent, haven’t wanted to buy any of the passenger vehicles the company over-enthusiastically cranked out.

This seems odd on its face. You might think that a corporate entity with GM’s resources would have had the presence of mind and the ability to hire the wizards to plumb the depths of consumers’ automotive likes and dislikes, then build a product reflecting same and price it somewhere in the area of reasonable value-for-money. You might think, but evidently you would be wrong.

This is, after all – a phrase with a sadly relevant ring -- a company that brought to the unsuspecting and subsequently unimpressed auto market such triumphs as the Pontiac Aztek, the Cadillac Cimarron, and the Chevrolet Corvair . What could they possibly have been thinking?

Well, here’s what they weren’t thinking. To an appalling and eventually fatal degree, they weren’t thinking anywhere nearly enough like the people who decide they need new four-wheel transportation, look at some ads, do some research, talk to some friends, maybe go to a car show, check out a dealer or two, then sign up for a long series of monthly payments, drive their new pride and joy home from the dealer and park it proudly in their driveway. At which point, far too often in the case of GM products, it all starts to fall apart. At least figuratively,

Because while any number of car enthusiast publications and websites spin out performance numbers, the measurement that often matters most is how the buggy performs parked in front of its owner’s house. Does it support, even promote the owner’s self-image? Does it attract appreciative, even envious attention from the neighbors? And does it do so to an extent sufficient to sell enough copies to support the mind-bogglingly complex operation that is GM?.

Evidently not. A major reason for which is to be found on the streets of the U.S. auto industry’s hometown, the Motor City, Detroit. Or better, on the leafy avenues and lanes of Detroit’s suburbs where dwell the executives responsible, virtually always in committee, for saying, “Yup – this one’s as good as we can make it. Let’s crank up the production lines.” And who, at the end of their workday descend to the garage of their headquarters where, if a chauffeured limo does not await, they climb into a current-year, company-provided car which will have been washed, fueled and serviced by and at the company’s expense. And who, as a result, have only the gauziest understanding of how their supposed customers actually deal with, and relate to their products. If GM’s managers and friends – and Detroit is nothing if not a company town – drive the same cars in the same other-worldly fashion, how could they possibly appreciate, let alone anticipate the lack of buyer enthusiasm which regularly met GM’s product offerings?

Saturn, which GM launched with such optimistic fervor in 1990, was billed as “A different kind of car, from a different kind of company.” Although some 500 miles from Detroit, the new Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee was insufficiently distant to avoid the effects of GM’s fatal disconnect with its market. GM announced the plant will be one of two put on “standby” this fall, ready to resume production at some indefinite future date. As if.