In the compact and sub compact market there is nothing in the domestic lineup right now that would even merit a test drive from me. I had high hopes for the Chevy Cobalt but with the recent Corolla plus the Civic, Elantra etc it is sitting near the back of the pack.
I know lots of other people who feel the same way. Kind of sad...
The Big Three never truly developed their compact car lines for North America. The first oil shocks of 1973 allowed Honda and Toyota to gain some ground, and though the Civic and Corolla weren't great cars, they were the class leaders in a limited segment that suddenly grew like crazy. For some reason, Honda and Toyota decided to focus their efforts on that class, seeking to earn massive volumes of sales while The Big Three seemed to say "cheap cars don't need high quality" and laughed at entry level buyers.
Then the oil shocks came hard again in 1979 and the recession of the early 1980's allowed Honda and Toyota to gain futher ground with the Accord and Camry. Once again, The Big Three had no credible competitors (The Chevy Citation? What a joke) Did they come out hard and sink money into R&D for inreasing quality in the compact and newly invented Accord-class? No. They whined about Japanese firms. Toyota and Honda started building plants in North America to overcome import restrictions. They also played on the fact that their products were now being built locally.
GM et al lucked out with the cheap gas of the 1990's and rebounded with the giant SUV craze. Ah, but history repeats itself. Didn't everyone know that the price of oil might go through the roof again? Huh? Toyota and Honda were being laughed at as they came out with the Insight and Pruis. They soldiered on with improving the Civic and Corolla while GM kept pushing the Cavalier on people. Whoops. Oil is $130 a barrel, gas is pushing $4/gal in the US, and guess what? Toyota HAS been pushing big vehicles, but not at the expense of the smaller lines. They're going to get hit on the truck/SUV side, but they can bring hybrid/whatever cars to market quickly and people will line up to buy them.
People can go on all they like about wages, contracts, whatever, but the truth is that poor products, poor management and lack of long term outlooks have crushed the Big Three. Executive compensation was tied to stock prices some time ago, and the market reacted quickly to cost cutting measures with immediate stock surges. Guess what? Executives learned that short term results enriched them personally. Heck, they'd make $100 million and even if they go the boot after two years, so what? They were rich. No one cared about developing products. No one cared about quality or market driven products. Management focused on grinding suppliers and fighting with the unions.
Read Wagoner's book and he admits that GM made massive managment mistakes over 30 years prior to 1990, and found it nearly impossible to recover from them. Heck, they didn't listen at all. The board hired Ron Zarella to pilot the ship! Huh? The CEO of Bausch & Lomb? Yup, the world's largest car maker needs a guy from the Contact Lense market! Thankfully, he was replaced after four years, but that is indicative of the goofs made.
GM needs to look closely at the tight product lines of Honda and Toyota (Honda's is AMAZING in how few models span a huge audience and conserve production) to see that having a bewildering array of cars is NOT the way to go. Personally, I have NO idea of the differences of the Pontiac G5 or G6 and so on. Who wants to take the time to try and figure out their novel thick line up? Not me. They need a subcompact line (Yaris/Fit), compact line (Civic/Corolla), family sedan (Accord/Camry) and a CUV (CR-V/RAV-4) and they need to be clearly identified in the segment so that people know what is what.
Whatever they're putting in the coffee at Cadillac and Corvette needs to be fed to the managment at the rest of the company. I think those two brands are being left alone somehow. Now, they're not perfect, but those two lines show what GM has in terms of potential...
