Word: gm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...line of business. During the 1980s the company staggered from one automotive blunder to another. Worst among them were the cookie-cutter cars. The idea behind them was to save on manufacturing costs, one of Smith's abiding principles. But the look-alike models blurred the historical marketing distinction GM had carefully cultivated between Chevrolet at the bottom of the market, Cadillac at the top and Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick in between. None of the cookie-cutter cars will make it to the Automotive Hall of Fame...
...GM stumbled through the '80s, many people asked questions about Smith's competence. But GM's directors raised nary a public peep about the executive who was leading them downhill. The reason is simple, said Ross Perot, who was on the board at the time. "Smith has a Pet Rock board of directors." Bob Stempel was not so lucky...
JOHN ROCK HAS NEVER FITTED THE GENERAL MOTORS MOLD, EVEN though he spent 32 years as a GM troubleshooter in posts all over the world. He always refused to join a country club, instead preferring to build roads and dig wells on his 185-acre Montana spread. He seldom hid his differences with GM's top brass, often phrasing his protests in barnyard epithets. Last year, when he found himself sidelined in a staff job, the restless Rock prepared to take one of GM's early-retirement packages...
...Rock was just the kind of maverick that GM's new president, Jack Smith, was looking for last spring to join his team of bureaucracy busters. Rock's daunting assignment was to revive the company's most broken-down division: Oldsmobile. The nameplate, founded in 1897, was once renowned for powerful roadsters equipped with big V-8s like the Rocket 88. But the modern Oldsmobile suffered from an enervating loss of identity and fell disastrously in annual sales from 1 million cars in 1986 to less than 400,000 currently. Olds tried to entice younger buyers with the ad slogan...
...South Dakota, Rock earned a degree in psychology before embarking on a career that included posts at Buick and GMC Truck. At Oldsmobile, Rock began his revolution at the retail level, where he exhorted his dealers to emphasize customer service. He plans for Oldsmobile to become the first mainstream GM line to adopt the methods of the new Saturn division, which embraces higher standards of value, quality and service than other nameplates...