Today is not about making cars the customer wants. A crisis is a crisis. Toyota is making cars that people want to buy, yet they are renting acres of land to store their cars coming from Japan.
Everybody blames the big 3 for focusing on SUVs and pickups, but hey, they were just making cars that people wanted to buy at that time. They just lacked the ability to see ahead and realize that that scenario wouldn't last forever and the table turned faster than they could predict.
They've made a lot of enhancements and I do believe most of their efforts were made toward the right direction and that most of their products are on par with the products from the competition. But It doesn't matter how hard they try, they are already late to the party. So, only a big helping hand can save them now.
I don't see the point in apologizing, what is done is done, they should better get to work so they don't have to apologize to their stock holders.
I think that is giving them a free pass.
Lack of fuel efficient product was only one part of what led them to this point and it wasn't even the biggest one.
The massivly bloated organization and dealer network is a huge part of it and in terms of organization LED them to be slow to react.
I took a Master's level policy course in 93. One of the business cases we studied was GM. The reccomendation from nearly everyone in that class was that GM needed to get rid of at least 3 brands. We were all told to find another solution becuase GM would not trim brands.
Everyone outside that organization saw the problem and solution a decade ago. But becuase of the corporate culture at GM they refused to recognize it. Everyone had their own little kingdom. All those little kingdoms made it impossible to react quickly. GM had all the information that the other manufacturers had available to them in terms of changing market needs or quaility (in the 80s when their rep for poor quality was forged) in terms of those things the playing field was EQUAL. Yet they did less with that same information than others.
You can't excuse that by saying most of their efforts were made in the right direction. They clearly were not. Most of their efforts were made towards short term share price or preservation of the individual "kingdoms"
Apology should be the first stage. BUT framing the apology like we made mistakes In the PAST but that's all in the past now doesn't cut it especially when the people who are responsible for PERPETUATING this culture are the ones making the apology and are still there.
"We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on the core U.S. market,"
You are just realizing this NOW? Like I said a class for of 30 Canadians saw that in 1993 15 years later the CEO of GM is telling us OOPPPS we just realized what was happeneing sorry?
