April 14th  2006.

Seems as though every automotive webmeister in existence has had a go at GM lately.
One webmeister even figures he has enough clout to be invited onto the board of directors.
This is the equivalent of jumping into the snake pit, or the rat tunnel, take your pick, with Indiana Jones.

The wimps on the existing board just this week have bowed to Wagoners blackmail (my way or the highway)
and endorsed him as CEO.

Big deal.

Since I've been bitching about GMs bad product design and crappie quality for the last ten years or so, I reckon
that I'm entitled to climb onto the band wagon and give my two cents worth of advice to the embattled Mr Wagoner.

In a nutshell, my advice is: Stop trying to produce cars with four cylinder engines.

From the Vega to the Cavalier, GM has NEVER been able to produce a decent four cylinder engine.

They make great grand father clocks, but don't ask them to design a swiss watch, it's just never been part of their insular,
"We can do anything in Detroit" egotistical culture.

The same view might have applied to Chrysler Corp. at one time, as anyone who has ever owned a four cylinder Chrysler
minivan can tell you, but now that they have the benefit of Mercedes engineering know how, things have started to improve..

Ford has always consulted their European partners when designing small cars. The Focus was European "Car of the Year" twice
and was very reliable over there. Unfortunately, the value engineers ("bean counters") cheapened the design so much when it came
to America that it was the recall champion for a while (until the Porsche Cayenne took away that undistinguished distinction).

The latest Mazda/Ford/Volvo small cars are the product of fabulous engineering co-operation and it shows.

In the meantime, GM ignored both Vauxhall and Opel and tried to design their engines in Detroit.

Big mistake -- huge.

Now, however, GM seems to have lucked into a situation that may prove to be the best thing they've done in many many years.
I refer, of course to the acquisition of Daewoo. The CEO is a very tough limey, one Nick Reilly who now lives in Korea and is both
feared and respected in the automobile industry.

It appears that GM/Daewoo, producing such cars as the Wave and the Aveo is really on a roll

All indications are that these little cars are pretty good. So who needs a Cobalt at twice the price?

Today, Daewoo is rolling like never before. Even as Korea's home auto market has contracted GM Daewoos' sales are soaring.

It'll be tough to continue that performance, but the company expects double-digit growth for several years to come.

In fact, GM's Korean subsidiary is becoming a prime mover in its plans for global expansion. GM Daewoos cars are sold in more
than 140 countries. Across Asia, they have helped increase GM's market share.
And in Europe, the company's five models are being pitched as high-quality, low-cost alternatives to local brands.

In most markets outside Korea, it's being phased out in favour of GM's Chevrolet marque -- a brand GM usually pitches as more
American than apple pie. Since last year, Daewoos' Kalos compact has been marketed as the Chevrolet Aveo.

The Aveo, which starts at about C$13,000, was the best-selling low-end compact car in America for the past year,
beating out such rivals as the Hyundai Excel and the Toyota Yaris. Today the co-operation is being stepped up,
and Chevys sold in both Europe and Asia will come almost exclusively from GM Daewoos' factories.

The big test will come in Europe -- GM Daewoos' biggest market. That's when all of GMs' Korean-made cars will lose the
Daewoo nameplate in favour of Chevy, which is being positioned as an entry-level marque that will feed into GM's more mainstream
Opel brand. A big part of GM's thinking is that the Daewoo name is too tarnished to be buffed up as a European sales machine.

Now, GM is retooling much of Daewoos' lineup. It has set aside $1.5 billion to build new transmission and engine plants and to
develop a string of new models to be rolled out over the next few years. The first, a new Matiz mini car, is out in Europe and
Korea.

So GM could give up trying to produce four cylinder cars altogether and do as Ford has already done with Mazda and hand over
small car design entirely to Daewoo.

In the meantime, I'd be very cautious of this tendency on the part of Detroit to extract more performance from their four cylinder
engines by bolting on a turbo charger. As in the past, I can see the smoke and hear the horrible bottom end noises right now.

Where low tech American engines are concerned, there is still no substitute for cubic inches.

POSTSCRIPT

My blog has been warning you to avoid the expensive and unnecessary hybrid trap for lo' these many years.
Encouraging, therefore that Autoextremist this week seems to have come to much the same conclusion:

"Hybrids. Is there trouble in Hybrid-Ville? You'd better believe it. It seems that the notoriously fickle American consumer is losing
interest in the whole hybrid thing, and the even the word has a tinge of "yesterday's news" about it. Consumers have finally got
around to reading all the nitty-gritty dollar comparisons, and they're beginning to understand that as technical exercises hybrids
are fine, but for most people who don't have the disposable income to drive a Hollywood-approved political statement, they
don't really have the appeal or "buzz" they once did. There are too many excellent, real-world vehicle choices out there that
happen to deliver excellent mileage - and hybrids are just one alternative, no matter how Toyotas' "Master Manipulators" try to
spin it for us poor, unenlightened folk in the hinterlands."

Return to blogville