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Technology Stocks : American Automobile Industry: Can it survive? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (267)	10/1/2009 9:00:22 AM
From: robert b furman	Respond to of 431

A sad finish to an insane "New Way"of doing business. Saturn,Roger Smith's New way of doing business - which was another way of saying We don't need unions at GM. Sadly this approach settled GM with but another layer of bureaucracy and administrative costs. It took from an existing group of franchised dealers almost all new product. Here are recent examples: Saturn Vue was given to Chevrolet 2 years later as an Equinox. Saturn Aura was given to Chevrolet a year and a half later as Malibu. Saturn Outlook was given to GMC as Acadia a year and a half later -then Buick got Enclave and then Chrvolet Traverse. All this hot new product into a black whole that didn't strengthen any thing and in fact weakened all of the already (too many) GM points that were suffering from overall market share loss. The old rule "let's get back to basics" now at the very end finally applies. No manufacturer of anything can propser when they go to war with their distributors - whom they rely on to fund the tradein and perform the servicing/warranty and collision repair services of the mutual ownerbase. With jealousy they wish the internet would replace their partners and then fragment them with new franchises - given to the friends of the factory who cow tow to their market brilliance. BRILLIANCE ???? Saturn - RIP Hummer - RIP SAAB - RIP OPEL - RIP OLDS - RIP Pontiac- RIP I hope there comes a day when the simpler business model of a few models - all of which are winners and a financially strong dealer body - all of which have sufficiently large geographical sales territories,to accord profitability for all participants. One thing for sure, there are a lot of empty lots and buildings available for a new low cost entry to build a nation wide organization of car retailers. That is what Penke's dream was. By the way if Penske can not do it - very doubtful any one can. Short of a government effort ,he had the capital,and knowledge base to do it - if anyone did. We'll know if the many sad lessons of failure have been learned as GM rolls out the new revolutionary VOLT. Will it be a "separate franchise" and just what will Chevrolet dealers have to do to "get in the game". I hope only that which will be rewarded with a return on investment vs an "all new look and way of doing business" I've heard that so much over the years, I just smile when I look up at my $4000.00 Aurora Light cloud,still in my showroom. The newbe GM reps walk under it and don't even know what it is. Good Riddens Saturn - Now let's build financial strength and a loyal owner base with great exciting products (Camaro,Equinox both are doing very well) backed up by a dealer body that can afford to do things right and stay close to our cutomers for all of their service needs - including the lowest priced maintenance of their new vehicles in the total marketplace. But that's another story of decades of marketplace loss - we'll fix that later.<smile> P.S. give you a hint - who can sell a tire cheaper than anyone in the world? Bob