Word: chevrolet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BARELY A WEEK AFTER NEW CEO JOHN F. SMITH Jr. pledged to make General Motors profitable by the end of 1993, his mission appears even more impossible. Most troubling, GM could now face untold costs in settling liability lawsuits relating to fire hazards in its Chevrolet and GMC pickup trucks, 5 million of which are still on the road. Newly released internal documents indicate that from 1983 to 1987, GM recognized but failed to correct a design flaw that exposed side fuel tanks during crash impacts, allegedly causing about 300 deaths...
...fallen out of touch with its customers. Except for products of GM's Saturn and Pontiac divisions, young drivers increasingly spurn the company's cars for Japanese makes or other U.S. models. The median ages for buyers of GM's bread-and-butter midsize lines are 45 for Chevrolet, 55 for Oldsmobile and 60 for Buick. By contrast, the ages of U.S. buyers of Japanese cars range from 35 to 40. GM has foundered while the more nimble Ford and Chrysler, which had long scrambled for niches in the GM-dominated marketplace, cut costs and brought out popular models like...
...early 1960s GM was having trouble building small cars to compete with imports like the Volkswagen Beetle. Chevrolet's ill-fated Corvair, which Ralph Nader judged to be "unsafe at any speed," made few inroads against imports. Yet GM was lulled into complacency by the success of its Pontiac GTO and other trend-setting muscle cars. When buyers flocked to small cars during oil crises in the 1970s, GM's failure to produce a winning model was ominous. "They had become so arrogant and efficient at defining trends that when a fundamental shift took place, they failed to adapt," says...
Perhaps GM's crowning folly during the '80s was the reorganization of its North American operations into two clumsy megagroups. The plan gave responsibility for small cars to GM's Chevrolet, Pontiac and Canadian divisions, and handed large cars to the Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac units. While that may have seemed sensible at the time, it created a new level of bureaucracy sandwiched between the automaking divisions and GM's corporate headquarters. The results ranged from mass confusion to a proliferation of look-alike models. "Everything Roger Smith tried failed," says Womack. "The screwball capital investment, the screwball reorganization. Smith...
...sliding into recession. That hindered sales of GM's 1991 fall line, one of its best in years. The redesigned models included the full-bodied Buick Park Avenue and the luxurious Cadillac Seville. "Our sales depend on the economy," says Jamal Karmouta, who manages a Chevrolet dealership in Southern California. "When the economy moves up a little, we'll be selling more cars." But with GM strapped for cash, its new offerings for 1993 are limited mainly to a redesigned Cadillac Brougham and sporty Camaros and Firebirds...