Word: pontiac
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...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...
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...
Biggest Letdowns. Kodak's disk cameras took fuzzy pictures. RJR's Premier, the so-called smokeless cigarette, tasted like burning plastic. New Coke wasn't the real thing. The Pontiac Fiero caught on fire, literally, then flamed out. Home banking via personal computer was for nerds. All-suite hotels went up, then stood vacant. And portfolio insurance may have helped cause the crash...
...photos, was GM's top-secret Saturn automobile, which the company has spent $3 billion to develop and plans to roll into showrooms late next year. What really sent the motor moguls into orbit were signs that the Saturn pictures, along with shots of the 1993 Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird in the same issue, had been leaked to the trade magazine by an employee in GM's design studios. Unlike the grainy, long-distance spy shots that paparazzi regularly take of new models as they whiz around company test tracks, the Saturn pictures were crisp and carefully posed...
...requirements. Reason: automakers have complied since 1983 with California's pollution laws, which are the strictest in the U.S. and will become even tighter in the 1990s, when they are to serve as models for the rest of the country. Such 1989 cars as the South Korean-built Pontiac LeMans and Japan's Nissan Maxima emit less than 0.2 gram of nitrogen oxide per mile. At the same time, Chrysler sells its California dealers a $100 pump that helps cars meet restrictions by recirculating exhaust through the engine and catalytic converter to reduce toxic emissions...