The reason why Buick-Pontiac-GMC should stay is because they act as one brand, under one dealership roof, with shared manufacturing and could actually be successful going forward. in the yr. 2000 each had substaintially higher market shares but have deviated from their core branding and message.

It will not cost GM a lot of money to close Hummer/SAAB/Saturn because their dealership footprint is extremely small. combined they have under 1,000 dealerships which minimizes lawsuits and allows dealers to be successfully bought out by the company. when Oldsmobile was shuttered in 2000 the brand has 2,800 dealers which made it significantly harder and more expensive to close.

Using that logic it should only cost GM $700 million dollars to completely unwind those three brands, which is a mire pittance when compared to the $ 30 billion dollar infusion it is about to recieve from the U.S. government to sustain their operations.

To sell Saab/Hummer/Saturn would be a big mistake, it would strengthen their competitors and not help to alleviate the over-branded U.S. market. competitiors will shift production and produce lower cost vehicles and use U.S. dealerships for their entry to the U.S market, this will overall be a major negative to GM in the long term.

It is costing GM more to keep those three brands than it would cost to buy out dealers and shutter those non-essential brands that combined only account for 1.8% of the U.S. market as of 2008, while the Nissan brand alone accounts for 6 times more market share, the writting seems to be on the wall for this one.

Buick right now seems in trouble, as well as pontiac but both brands can be saved by being relegated to importing successful international automobiles. Buick becomes an importer for some high end Opel cars to the U.S., while Pontiac could import most of the Holden Austrailia line under their Pontiac banner to the U.S. this would allow the entire Pontiac/Buick/GMC line to exist with little to no investment or upkeep from GM, which would allow GM to be able to focus on turning around/creating new products for both Cadillac and Chevrolet.

Internationall there are opportunities for consolidation as well. GM should absolutely retain Opel as they are integral to the company and will provide products and logistics for other divisions, my main recomendation would be to eliminate Vauxhall and rebrand it as opel, having that one brand for just Britain is a drain on the company and is an unneccesary cost that can be avoided. this will be a benefit to strengthen the Opel brand as well as cutting costs.

The same logic is used for allowing Holden Austrailia to take over the Daewoo division rebranding the entire division as Holden Worldwide, significantly slimming down their overlap and investment costs and capitalizing on the Holden name and logo.

these steps will get GM on the right track to completely reinvigorate their business and return to their core values while removing brands that severely drain cash from the company as well as massive overlap. by taking the above mentioned steps they will be better positioned to grow their market share in the U.S. and internationally and will be better able to understand and respond to market shifts and changes in consumer tastes. GOOD LUCK GM!!!

Chevy = base model, general vehicles.

Buick = semi-luxury/business class vehicles

Pontiac & Cadillac become styling packages (which is really what they already are). In reality, that what’s these really are. Similar to Lexus and Acura for Toyota and Honda.

Chevy Pontiac will be a sporty vehicle, with sports options. A handful of models will only be available as Chevy Pontiac (ie: the Solstice).

Cadillac becomes a premium styling and packaging. Mostly applied to Buick models. But also a few Chevy models (ie: Tahoe). A few models might be available as Cadillac only.

All dealers to be GMC (General Motors). However, some to be “GMC Premium Dealers” which will offer Pontiac and Cadillac option lines.

The advantage would be a reduction in the brand management. And a consolidation of dealership types, but not necessarily dealerships.

***

I also think they should sell off Saab but retain Hummer. Yes, sounds crazy. But there is still a lot that can be done with Hummer. Hummer should be the off-road branch of GM. I think a “pick-up” truck might be a good line. It’d be nice to see the H3 line either dropped or made a hybrid similar to the Tahoe hybrid. In fact, it might be interesting to make ALL Hummers hybrid. They’re a premium line, if you’re going to buy a high end hummer, might as well drop $8,000 more to make it a hybrid.

I also think Hummer should make a variant similar to the mini-Cooper. Except off-road. Same styling, off road ruggedness, etc. But in a small compact three seater. (Two front, one middle-rear.)

***

Saturn is the tougher decision. Saturn was once a gem, what happened to it? Saturn got itself confused. Saturn should be the “College” line. Get rid of the Solstice, mini-vans, etc. Focues BACK onto the college market. Affordable, simple, smaller, etc.

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This leaves GMC with four distinct brands:

Chevy (General vehicles, Trucks, vans, mini-vans, sedans, SUVs, Pontiacs, etc)
Buick (Full size sedans, crossover SUVs, Cadillacs)
Saturn (Cobalt, Aveo, Korean sub-compacts, & minis)
Hummer

With Pontiac & Cadillac being styles or designs of Chevy & Buick that are either sporty or luxurious.

Amen. Well said.

Yes, unions can make it harder, there are pros and cons of everything. Unions have much less turnover but a lack of incentive to perform better. I’m not a union suporter but I’m sick of hearing companies blame their issues on them. Very little of their real issue is actually caused by unions.

http://www.greencar.com/perspective/perspective-volvo-hybrid/

Interesting how much not only GM’s current Volt sounds so much like like this 1992 Volvo prototype, but GM’s own circa 1999 prototype series hybrid EV-1 did (which also had a turbine engine to power the generator).

Case in point, Volvo was working on a plug-in hybrid when Ford bought them in 1999 and promtly canceled the project(s).

In fact, the following long quote comes from Sherry Boschert’s book “Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars That Will Recharge America”, page 72 (2006 edition)…..

“Volvo was the 1st large car company (they are bigger in the rest of the world than in North America) to show a plug-in hybrid prototype, displaying the “Environmental Concept Car” (ECC) in 1992. Based on the Volvo 850*** chasis but built out of aluminum to get the lightest possible weight, the car ran on a series hybrid system (sound familier??) that could recharge its nickel-cadmium batteries (best available at the time) by plugging in or by the gasoline-turbine (also sound familer? GM later used a turbine in their prototype later that same decade) high-speed generator, which served as the auxiliary power unit. The ECC could go 53 miles on electricity alone in urban driving. In hybrid mode, it had a fuel efficiency of 39-45 miles per gallon for a total range of 273-315 miles.

The turbine could burn just about anything, giving the ECC flexibility in the fuel used as backup for electricity. The designers hoped that the ECC would be future-proof by accommodating a variety of fuels instead of just gasoline, says Ichiro Sugioka, science officier at the Volvo Monitoring and Concept Center, a think-tahnk near Santa Barbara, California.

Plans for plug-in hybrids evolved to the point that Volvo started producing one called the HEV98 that combined an electric drivetrain with a 3-cyclinder piston engine. Sugioka drove an HEV98 during secret testing in Southern California….

Volvo started making and testing a fleet of the cars in Sweden, where the company built all its vehicles, but hadn’t officially launched the produt when Ford Motor Company bought Volvo in 1999 and killed the plug-in hybrid programs. Ford wanted to maximize its profits and told designers to focus on the company’s core produts — SUVs. Engineers also had started designing plug-in versions of other Volvo vehicles under a seret program code-named Desiree. They took the parallel hybrid drivetrain developed in Desiree and applied it instead to Ford’s 1st hybrid SUV, the Escape hybrid….”

**** the 850 later was renamed the S70… this is not a tiny car… I believe it’s mid-size (at least my model year 2000 S70 is).

This should also point out that GM was *not* the only one who worked to kill their EV programs, all the auto makers did. I forget the public reason why Ford bought Volvo (was Volvo in financial trouble at the time?), but I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason from Ford’s point of view was to buy Volvo so they could kill the EV program.

Imagine what would have happened it Volvo had stayed independent… since North America is a small market for them, and Europe is much bigger, they probably would have had brought to market their plug-in hybrids where petro prices have always been an order of magnitude higher…..