Word: sloane
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After a calamitous decade of billion-dollar 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...
This year Mr. Sloan would have been pleased. From Chevrolet there is the powerful silhouette of the first new Corvette in 13 years and the return of the once popular Malibu family sedan with both headroom and horsepower to spare. From Oldsmobile there is the Intrigue, a new nameplate for an elegantly 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...
...wave of new vehicles this year reflects the company's efforts to reposition or reclaim many of GM's 49 car and truck brands by updating Sloan's book of marketing. Sloan demanded distinctly different styles for almost every demographic position and taste, a strategy that eventually gave way to identical cars bearing different nameplates. But segmentation is back in vogue, and for GM that means re-emphasizing traditional middle-American, mainstream strengths at Chevrolet while almost totally overhauling the customer base and appeal at Oldsmobile. Image makers at Olds are seeking to shed the stodgy, budget-priced profile that...
...going to buy another Chevrolet or any GM product. It's time to bring them back into the fold. We need to launch these products, put them out there and let the customer decide. This is put-up or shut-up time." Fighting words, Mr. Middlebrook. But as Alfred Sloan might also urge on his new generation at Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac and Chevy: There is still much to do, and little time left...
Such a bureaucratic beats-me did not go down well. Says radiologist David Dershaw of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City: "People were stunned by the NCI panel's action." Women's groups slammed it; NCI chief Richard Klausner admitted he was shocked by it; and the U.S. Senate, reading these hardly inscrutable tea leaves, voted 98 to 0 for a nonbinding resolution endorsing the value of regular mammography...