Word: gm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What happened to the domestic cars? In the view of a GM executive now on the European side, Opel chairman Louis Hughes, the rapid pace of change at the U.S. company came at a price. Says he: "We changed all of our cars. We downsized them twice, changed from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive, changed all the systems of the company, changed all the factories, then told almost every employee in North America...
...most damaging change in GM's 1984 reorganization was probably the dismantling of its two huge, parochial divisions, Fisher Body and GM Assembly. GM created in their place two integrated divisions, now called Buick- Oldsmobile-Cadillac (BOC) and Chevrolet-Pontiac-GM of Canada (CPC). The move may have made financial sense, but it diminished what automakers call brand character by centralizing design and engineering operations...
...GM's classic structure, Oldsmobile designed, built and marketed autos that were distinct from the other car divisions' products. Now Oldsmobile no longer builds its own cars and contributes little to the design and engineering. For all practical purposes, Oldsmobile is only a marketing division whose purpose is to sell cars made by BOC. "The responsibility for manufacturing a car is about as far from the people who sell it as you can possibly get," says Manhattan auto analyst Maryann Keller. "One of the most poignant things lost in the reorganization was the loyalty of individuals to brands. People missed...
Under the reorganization, the Cutlass Supreme was subsumed into the $5 billion GM-10 project, which also developed versions of the Buick Regal and the Pontiac Grand Prix, all of which shared components with one another. In spite of GM's huge investment in retooling and reorganization, the result was a car line that has failed to excite consumers. Further weakened by a slumping U.S. auto market, the Olds Cutlass has turned into a money loser...
...VectraCavalier, meanwhile, was the result of a vastly different reorganization. GM Europe entered the 1980s as a patchwork of competing and often uncooperative concerns stretching from the company's new small-car plant near Zaragoza, Spain, to its aging Vauxhall factories in Luton and Ellesmere Port, England. Before the reorganization, GM Europe was very much a West German-led company. The first goal of the restructuring was to broaden its character, so in 1986 the company moved its headquarters to neutral Zurich. There an amazingly lean head-office staff proceeded to coax the diverse GM Europe factions into cooperating with...