Word: gm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...which a generation of GM investors, analysts and observers might say, "Again?" GM has had more turnarounds than a buck private on guard duty, all of them leading nowhere. In the swift and ravaging decline of a single decade, GM's car sales dropped off by nearly 2 million vehicles, or 40% of its 1985 volume, a loss that was only partly cushioned by a 21% rise in truck sales. Management made poor, even inexplicable, choices. For instance, in 1983 the company suspended production of the Chevrolet Malibu, the country's favorite family car and one of its all-time...
...losses and misdirected diversification, General Motors Corp. is attempting to reinvent the wheel. In the 1920s, its chairman and creator, Alfred P. Sloan, decreed, "General Motors will be known for building cars for every purse and purpose." As part of a stunning, perhaps even desperate, act of corporate rebirth, GM is spending a suitably giant-size $6 billion this year to launch a fleet of 16 new vehicles. The goal is to occupy rediscovered market niches, and begin the next decade's equally awesome mission--reclaiming its lost automotive empire...
...tailored four-door sedan that, its chief designer says, "looks like a car dressed in a Chanel suit." From Pontiac, there is a two-tone macho minivan for suburbanites who still lust for the fast lane. From Saturn, the EV1, a noiseless, all-aluminum electric vehicle. From Cadillac, Catera, GM's first Euro-American entry, designed to take on such young luxury imports as the BMW-3s and Lexus ES300...
Having sold or put up for sale such subsidiaries as Electronic Data Systems, Hughes Aerospace and a part of its Delphi parts division, GM is betting its future solely on its ability to sell automobiles at reasonable profit, something it has not done in North America since Cadillacs had fins. Says Rick Wagoner, president of GM's North American operations: "It's a watershed year for us to show that we can do great products. It's the freshman class of a new generation...
...deaths of 36 children and 20 adults since 1992. Fearing lawsuits if someone crashed in a car with an airbag disabled by mechanics, dealers responded with a hard push for switches, which they said would remove their liability by putting the choice in the hands of drivers. Chrysler and GM claim it will take several months to develop and test the new switches...