New Government Motors (GM) Chairman Says "I don't know anything about cars"

"I'm not that old" is the best part. omg!

what did the ex CEO of Home Depot (mr nardelli) knew about cars back then?

Doesn't have to. Just has to surround himself with smart people and listen. His skils should be management and running an organization. Besides Chrysler and the old G.M. supposedly had people who "knew cars".

maybe GM should try to recruit people frm Honda and Toyota. At least they know about cars AND how to make a profit.

What's the big deal! Look at you Alpine, you don't know shit about real estate but you can't stop talking about it...

come on! the car industry is ultra competitive. there's no time for "let me learn" types. the big 3 are competing against managers that know about running an organization AND about making cars. you cannot compete starting from behind like this. i don't see the need for this at all.

aren't there great managers available that made their careers the way managers make them at Honda or Toyota? that worked in the plant? is that too much to ask? it's not a mystery why these guys make basic mistakes starting from the supply chain. anyway... there our tax dollars go... to make up for it.

"Besides Chrysler and the old G.M. supposedly had people who "knew cars"."

you are talking about opel and mercedes, right? ford is where you can still find somebody that knows about cars. mulally after all comes from boeing (which is related, saab type of story and inverse of honda). but hey, from DIY home depot to Chrysler? what do those have in common? the HELOCs as a way to finance the purchase?

GM has been run so back-asswards for the past 20 years that if you unwrapped a mummy from Egypt they could do a better job than these jokers that destroyed the company.

Admin, you are wrong. The guy's being humble. It's quite possible to run an effective organization without the prior doman knowlege. I doubt the CEO of G.M. needs to be able to assemble a carburetor. He'll hire effective managers with the various skill sets. This happens all the time and I doubt there is much correlation between success and failure. There are so many variables to consider.

a janitor can improve GM. that's not the point. you need the best people with knowledge NOW to compete with Honda and Toyota. "willing to learn" is not enough to survive, nor is to be managed better than during hte last 20 years. these companies have to be competitive against amazing ones. being good or ok is not going to be enough (unless taxpayers are providing life support forever).

Admin, I would also argue the failure at g.m. was worse than poor capital allocation combined with sub par marketing. They also mis-handled labor relations for several decades. A good manager could bring in the right people to address that..

Why can't you guys happily accept that (as with the airlines), the US automobile business has for decades now been about lobbying the government, not providing goods or services to consumers in exchange for revenues that exceed expenditures? Get with the program. Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.

Riverside, ok, put a good guy in HR then. you seem to believe that not knowing anything in an area allows you by miracle to be able to chose good people in that area. you cannot delegate knowledge and be effective at the same time (imho). mistakes had been made all over the place in GM, it's hard to believe.

Anyway, the competition deserves this type of bizarre appointment. The treatment towards GM and Chrysler had been unfair to them, so the more clueless the guy is, the better for them i guess. Ford will make it, the other 2 i cannot care less anyway.

Alan Hart makes a good point. Not sure if he intended to, but this is most likely about preserving a voter base until the next election. Turning around the auto-companies is like trying to nimbly steer an ocean liner. Close to impossible. I also find it funny that Chrysler is going to FIAT. Many of the old Soviet car models were based on FIATS..

No, that wasn't my point.

I fondly remember the Yugos sold in the US -- based on FIATs so bad that FIAT had already stopped making them.

"Alan Hart makes a good point. " only when it comes to the ex big 3. the american car industry is not only about them nor the rust belt anymore. move on.

Admin, I'm just saying, there are many skill sets a good CEO brings. You seem to value knowlege of cars higher than the other skill sets of which there are many. And an H.R. manager probably does not have the skill sets to be CEO. I don't recall such a transition ever taking place, unless it's for an out-sourcing company perhaps..

As a matter of fact, when companies are in very dire straits , they usually hire a person with strong finance,accounting background to take the helm, as those skill sets are critical when cash is short..

"the US automobile business has for decades now been about lobbying the government"

that's the mistake right there, their definition of "US automobile biz". GM thinking that his competition was Ford and not Honda+Toyota+Nissan+Hyundai+...

Admin,
I disagree, I believe the error of G.M. was not understanding that their core business was cars. They instead diversified into Satelites & Mortgages areas outside of core competancy. Ironically those two companies were quite successful for years, but proved a distraction. Acquiring new car companes was also a distraction taking away from their core brand. Opel for years was a respected well run company. The days when G.M. didn't take Toytoa seriously are long past. The problem was they didn't allocate resources effectively. They also didn't have an effective labor strategy, giving into labor strikes, etc. The cost structure was horrible and they took money out of the u.s. car business to fund satellites and mortgages.

god, i don't mean a CEO that's HR. i mean appoint the right people for the right job.

GM has problems in all areas, that doesn't mean that the solution is a guy that knows about how to reign in chaos but not about the product. it's all about the product. is it possible that those that appointed this guy are also undervaluing the competition the way the big 3 did during the last 2 decades? the competition is as low key as you can get, in fear of retaliation against foreign car makers in USA but their mkt share growth had been amazing. would people recognize this appointment was a mistake if GM's mkt share drops below 15%?

Admin, I left out G.M. CLASS E when they tried to compete with IBM in data outsourcing. Also want to be clear, Opel was not a newly acquired brand. They ran Opel effectively for years. It was almost always profitable and a well respected brand.

"They ran Opel effectively for years."

well, germans don't generally feel that way. but i get too much into this for some weird reason. i followed several of these companies till a year ago. at some point had puts on gm while being long on honda so the mkt proved me right for that moment. but maybe i'm very wrong with this now though. read the financial statements of 2006 and 2007 of honda and gm. for me it was a lesson on what good management is (honda) and is not (gm) at many different levels and areas. should be required reading for some MBA class.

"I don't know anything about cars," Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. "A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I'm not that old, and I think the business principles are the same."

This mentality is precisely why Corporate America is in such a sorry state. Beverage company execs who think they know how to run an airline. Airline execs who think they can run a bank. Bank execs who think they can run an automobile company.

Newsflash: "Business" is NOT just "business". You have to have at least some expert command of the business' INDUSTRY to be able to effectively run that business!

It's not just the ignorance, but the arrogance that's most breathtaking.

sounds just like you, matt.

You are missing a big point. He's the chairman, not the CEO. Also, what was Mullaley's background? What's the background of the Chairperson and CEO of ADM (hint: not agriculture). Other things are important besides industry specific knowledge, especially in an industry going through a seismic shift.

Just wanted to point out that Ford went to Boeing for its CEO back in 2006
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Columns/articleId=119082

Sometimes you have to go outside the box to think outside the box

Solution: take the manufacturing equipment from Detroit, etc. and move it to Las Vegas where you can buy a plant for zero (or better yet, get the local gov't to condemn it for a "public use" by a private company) and make a deal to pay zero taxes, and get labor for close to nothing because unemployment is so high they will work for nickel slots money.

riversider, about mulally, cars and airplanes are a common combination. think saab, honda, BMW (engine makers). now at&t?

"This mentality is precisely why Corporate America is in such a sorry state. Beverage company execs who think they know how to run an airline. Airline execs who think they can run a bank. Bank execs who think they can run an automobile company. "

absolutely true

Admin,
I'm not arguing if the CEO that G.M. is getting is the right choice. My point is that prior auto-industry experience should not be a prerequisite. When considering outside candidates evaluating the relevance of the past experience is definitely appropriate and necessary. I am pointing out that expertise in labor relations, systems integration, gov't relations and marketing are also of value. I would be a little worried about a CEO who thought he had the expertise as that introduces over-confidence(as an aside I just listened to an excellent Malcolm Gladwell video on the topic referencing the Brittish at Galipoli)

Admin,
I'm not a fan of testimonial or anecdotal evidence but I recalled that IBM was turned around by a cookie guy.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1040369.html

From the IBM article
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1040369.html

What Gerstner taught us
For good reason. MBAs are already studying Gerstner’s management style. Here are some of the valuable lessons you can learn from his 10-year reign at IBM.

* Admit your ignorance.From the onset, Gerstner knew he had to be a fast study and learn how a technology company worked (where the profit centers were and what each product contributed to the bottom line) before he could effectively run massive IBM. Relating to his small army of techies was irrelevant.
* Hire exceptional people. “One of his brilliant moves was hiring Jerry York as CIO,” says Garr. “There was a lot of waste and extraneous people on the payroll. York didn’t have to look far to find them. He saved the company tens of millions of dollars within the first two years.” Instinctively, Gerstner knew he had to constantly hire new blood. His philosophy was simple: “If you don’t perform, you’re out”. This outlook ended the nepotism that was part of the company’s culture for 40 years.
* Get to know your customers.Customers want to see that the CEO is real. Unlike former IBM top brass who hardly ever ventured from their corner offices, Gerstner spent half his time traveling around the globe speaking to IBM customers. His staff marveled at his energy. He figured the best way to learn about his company was by talking to his customers and finding out whether his company was delivering on its promise. “It’s hard to estimate its value,” says Garr. “He probably spent more time on the road than any other CEO.” Routinely Gerstner asked his customers, “How can I serve you better as a vendor?” How else could he know what the company was doing wrong?
* Stay focused. Gerstner never got sidetracked. He kept to the business at hand, righting the sinking company and putting it back on course. That meant returning to profitability. He was also never swayed by negative criticism. Many veteran IBMers thought Gerstner was out of his mind. But he never gave it a thought.
* Adjust products to changing markets. Gerstner helped create IBM’s large OEM business, which had been small when he took over, according to Garr. “He went into the labs and said, ‘Let’s get these items out there. If we don’t make them under our own faceplate, let’s make them under someone else’s,’” says Garr. “IBM became a big outsourcing company, an area in which it never before thought it would see profits. Prior to Gerstner, IBM avoided outsourcing because it didn’t think it was glamorous.”
* Spend wisely. Don’t waste company time on unnecessary trappings, such as cars, homes and big offices. Gerstner even sold IBM’s art collection—reportedly worth $50 million—a drop in the bucket for the massive company.

The more I think about it Admin, going outside G.M and the auto-industry is agreat way to shake up complacency and right the ship. I hope the guy G.M. chose can do it..

ADMN , MALTHUS BROUGHT UP A GOOD EXAMPLE ADM
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/29/magazines/fortune/mpw.woertz.fortune/index.htm

Patricia Ann Woertz became CEO of Archer Daniels Midland in 2006, beating out 4 other competitors. Formerly an Executive Vice President at Chevron Corporation, Woertz left to pursue CEO opportunities. In an interview with Fortune Magazine, she characterized herself as an outsider at ADM: "I'm outside the company, outside the industry, outside the family, outside the gender expectations."

Born in Pennsylvania in 1953, she studied accounting at Penn State University, graduating in 1974. She first worked for Ernst & Young in Pittsburgh, then moved to Gulf Oil, an Ernst & Young client. There she rose steadily through the ranks, with a stint in Vancouver, British Columbia, to become President of Chevron International and ultimately Executive Vice President of Chevron's global downstream operations. At ADM, she is expected to focus on ethanol and biofuels.

While CEO of Archer Daniels Midland in 2008, Patricia A. Woertz earned a total compensation of $14,961,265, which included a base salary of $1,291,867, a cash bonus of $3,042,000, stocks granted of $9,154,793, and options granted of $1,306,230.[1]

sometimes i'd even argue that is optimal to have someone who hasn't been invested in the industry long-term, particularly here.

finance is a particularly thorny issue because they've made it virtually impossible for someone not to be in finance to be promoted. and admin, look at how well that's worked out.

A.R. Some good points. If the board of directors had gone outside of investment banking circles for a CEO of say, Bear or Lehman , we might have avoided the over-confidence resulted in the fatal dooming of both. Who knows an outsider brought into Bear might have argued for more agency transactions or lower leverage. Clearly there are advantages in conducting a search outside the organization. An argument also exists for conducting a CEO search outside the industry...

Wagoner actually brought in a car guy, Bob Lutz, and gave him a tremendous amount of decision making authority.

Bob did do a lot of good:
- making product king in terms of management direction and product execution
- forcing suppliers to dramatically improve quality of product by showing them Audi interiors for example and requiring them to aim for that standard
- managing to steer GM away from its bad old days of badge engineering dreamed up and implemented by the ex Proctor and Gamble management who thought all you needed was to differentiate mediocre product with specific brand identifiers (all Pontiacs had to have that awful ribbed plastic cladding for example)

He and Wagoner made a pretty big mistake however:
- pushing forward the release of the GMT900 truck platform (Tahoe, Yukon, Suburban) by 6 months to capture the last hurrah of the big truck era just when the media (and you know how late to the party they are when it comes to trends) was talking about the end of the SUV era. With such a large number of these behemoths leased, the subsequent write offs in the billions, due to collapsing residuals, easily negated any benefit from the pushed forward launch and prior billions invested. GM may as well have not bothered.

But ultimately GM's problems could not be solved by simply better product. They had crippling pension liabilities that made building cars that could made a profit nearly impossible. They had too many overlapping brands and too many dealers that demanded a copy of the product that the other brand had. Chevy Traverse, GMC Acadia, Saturn Outlook and Buick Enclave are perfect examples of this disease.

Combined annual sales of these capable three row, efficient (more efficient that the vaunted Honda Pilot) crossovers were basically the same as one model from Ford. The Edge. What was the point of all these dealers with multiple brands selling essentially the same model (Buick Enclave is actually sufficently different but it is the same platform) when Ford could do it with one model and many less dealers and hence costs?

GM were operating the brands, capacity and dealers of a company with 40% market share and they never downsized enough when they kept losing market share.

A lot of their product is as good and some of it better than Toyota (this is coming from a European car snob) which basically makes reliable appliances. Saturn Aura and Chevy Malibu are streets ahead of the Toyota Camry but the US public has been so burned over the years with bad product from the P&G and Bausch & Lomb (look up Ron Zarrella for his role in GM's destruction) "brand management" wilderness years that they dare not divert from the Toyota/Honda path.

All that to say that they did have a car guy basically leading the creation of new product but that was not enough. They needed to ditch thousands of dealers, many brands, many overlapping products, many factories, extricate themselves from debilitating pension liabilities and the only way that this could happen politically was for a man like Obama to force them into bankruptcy.

A pretty good summary can be found here:
http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2009/5/27/the-autoextremist.html

BTW, admin. Saab is not a good example.
They made innovative, quirky, ugly cars that did not make a profit until GM bought them in the 90's and built a Saab that was essentially an Opel Vectra with a Saab grille.

Honda do not have an airplane that anyone can buy right now.

As for BMW and its aircraft engines you cannot seriously be talking about their WW1 and WW2 engines surely?

the Ford CEO didn't know anything about cars. The best thing that the Ford CEO did was raise capital several years ago, before they needed it. But anyway, this is about leadership.

Rolls Royce makes great engines and great cars.

That was the CFO before Mullaly arrived. But that was an excellent decision.

Rolls Royce engines and Rolls Royce cars have been completely different companies sine the 70's with Rolls Royce cars made by BMW since being bought by them in 1998.

"Just wanted to point out that Ford went to Boeing for its CEO back in 2006"

Boeing is a much more relevant company to GM than AT&T, as both companies produce an actual product. AT&T produces nothing. Taking the CEO of a service company and throwing him into a manufacturing one is insane.

uf divvie. don't want to get into this too much. each company started in different ways. plane engines overlap in many of them. of course you know that saab is even an acronym that includes the word "airplane", BMW in its symbol. honda is doing mini jets but started with motorcycles. toyoda started with a yarn reeling machine. machines with engines are the link. honda defines itself even as of today as an engine company (1st in motorcycles and 1st in small energy generators...). do you get it now?

But you're talking about suitability of a CEO based on prior experience and I'm saying, particularly with Saab who did not make successful cars but made successful planes that these are bad examples.

I don't think an AT&T exec is the right person but I don't think you need a car person. Look at Bill Ford or Jacques Nasser as car guys that did not get it.

To your point, and repeating mine, look at what the P&G and B&L execs did to GM in the 80's and 90's so consumer product people are not the right people either.

Bob Lutz was a car guy and a product is king guy who was given a lot of power to change GM but, as I said, there aint much you can do with those odds stacked against you.

note below...this guy is the chairman not the CEO.

BTW admin, any thoughts on Bob Lutz? You didn;t seem to think that GM in the US had anyone that knew cars.
Also any thoughts on my contention that some GM product in key areas (Aura, Malibu, CTS) is world class? These products do compete well against Honda and Toyota equivalents.

I'm a brit who used to think that all American cars were junk and that nothing could touch the European or Japanese cars but I can see where progress has been made and all I am saying is there is good product but people have been too burned in the past to consider it. The fix has to be to get these people back and it will be a long hard slog to do so even with the best product in all product classes.

"note below...this guy is the chairman not the CEO."

same thing, even worse. boards were designed to keep the CEO on check and give ultimate direction, aligning interests with shareholders. look at the board of directors of honda and toyota. those guys have at least 30 years of experience in a very relevant role and get paid peanuts in comparison to their american counterparts.

now compare with usa companies of late. like nycmatt pointed out, it's a disgrace and it shows that expertise is undervalued by that people. this happens in usa in many sectors. look at finance, remember lehman? 3 people in the board were literally a broadway producer, a red cross director and another nothing-to-do with finance type of "i could be an expert if i put my mind to it". i honestly don't remember which other ridiculous background had, but it was mind blowing.

do you honestly believe that in times of emergencies and of setting long term goals those people are going to ask the right questions? i wouldn't be surprised if they could barely follow the conversation. iq and ability in something else is not enough for me as a shareholder, i'd want expertise and even that sometimes fails to deliver.

Sorry to have to say this for the third time in this thread: CEO AND CHAIRMAN ARE NOT THE SAME THING. I refer you to corporate governance 101.

And the argument that the car and plane industry are alike because they both have engines is ridiculous. What does selling billion dollar airplanes to a short list of corporate and military customers have to do with selling millions of cars to indiduals through dealer networks? Last I checked cars and AT&T both use technology. By the way, jets use gas turbines and cars generally use piston engines.

Regardless of whether its chairman or CEO, to make the case that auto-industry experience is the main or sole criteria is myopic. This is not the only skill or attribute worth considering. Admin, I'd like your take on IBM and Lou Gerstner.

A chairman is selected by a company's board to lead the board of directors, preside over meetings, and lead the board to consensus from the disparate points of view of its members. The chairman is the presiding director over the other directors on the board and is expected to be fair, a good listener, and a good communicator. Directors have a high level of fiduciary responsibility for overseeing the operation of a corporation. The term president is often used interchangeably with chairman, especially in the United States. The CEO is the head of the management committee and usually reports to the board, which is headed by the chairman.

In public companies, the role of the chairman of the board is distinct from that of the company's CEO or managing director. This point has more recently been brought into focus after corporate governance shortcomings were observed in companies where the two roles are combined. It is believed that the separation of functions within the board of directors or in the structure of the supervisory board and management board would facilitate control over the workings of the company and increase the accountability of the CEO or chairman of the management board. In an attempt to inject transparency into the relationship between executive management and the board of directors as well as between management and the market or shareholders, the UK Cadbury Report was published in 1992. Its recommendations have been adopted to a greater or lesser extent by some countries within the European Union and the United States, as well as by the World Bank.

"Admin, I'd like your take on IBM and Lou Gerstner. "

no idea. i've never own stock nor debt from IBM nor competitors. i only get deeply into those that i build a position at some point. that was the case with the autos. gm provided so much margin for safety with puts that was crazy! the list of things that was going to go wrong and didn't even anticipate was the longest i've made on any company. i'm also very happy of not using the short stock/long debt strategy that many used. seniority is not 100% respected, but this is a new low that regard. went long ford when the time was right. anyway, the mkt has been proving me right with autos in each move. funny enough, i don't own a car! :-) but the sector is a lot of fun for me.

Admin, I'd like your take on IBM and Lou Gerstner. "
no idea.

Good response. I sense you were shooting from the hip on this one.

Why the surprise.

The vast majority of real estate "investors" clearly didn't know a thing about real estate either.

riversider, shooting from the hip? i think you thought that IBM and GM are related, not me! i didn't even mention IBM.

anyway, i still think it's very funny that a guy on Medicare says "i'm not that old, i can learn about it". sure! the competition is gonna give GM all the time it needs so that they can learn about the product. if it were a regulated monopoly it would be still funny, but not so much.

Riversider, shooting from the hip? i think you thought that IBM and GM are related, not me! i didn't even mention IBM.

Admin, Identifying a company that did a CEO search outside it's industry is not related to topic at hand,,,,and being the better for it? I beg to differ.

nyway, i still think it's very funny that a guy on Medicare says "i'm not that old, i can learn about it

I get it. college kid working part time on internet site..

i own a gmc but will NEVER buy a car from the government. show of hands people - how many customers did they just loose?

what's so wrong with buying a car from the govt.?

http://www.autoreview.ru/new_site/year2001/n08/volga/800/volga-07.jpg

http://www.motorbase.com/uploads/2006/07/16/fs_photo_0190.jpg

http://imcdb.org/images/203/930.jpg

YUGO FILES CHAPTER 11
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) | January 31, 1989

NEWARK, N.J. - Yugo America Inc., the troubled importer of inexpensive Yugoslavian-made cars, its parent company and an affiliate filed for protection under federal bankruptcy laws despite objections from dealers. Sagging sales and the loss of dealerships were among the problems cited by Yugo in November when ...

Hey admin,

Congrats on your option plays.

However, I think you benefited from knowing about the myriad and systemic problems at GM rather than knowing about how to fix them - the latter being, amongst other things, that you were proffering an opinion on.

In summary I think we agree that GM's overly large dealer network (about 5X the numer of Toyota dealers) and production capacity geared for a much larger market share than they currently have, multiple overlapping brands that competed against each other and created a massive fixed cost basis, the crippling pension liabilities, the crippled management and decision making process, and legacy of extremely bad product churned out almost in defiance of customer needs over decades until recently, are the kinds of problems that have resulted in the GM we see today.

However, as I said, Bob Lutz was brought in as vice chairman of global product development and he did make a big difference to the quality and design of the products being produced. As I said the Chevy Malubu and Saturn Aura which compete in the largest (in terms of sales) car class in the US are often critically reviewed as being better than the Camry, Altima and Accord.

Additionally he forced a fundamental change in production quality at suppliers of interiors because the US cars were tradtionally inferior to the European and Japanese cars in this vital aspect and again you can see the benefits in the Malibu, CTS, Aura, and even the Tahoe, Yukonm, Suburban.

He also elevated design such that it became a critical part of the strategic planning process when developing new product.

Again you can see the fruit of all his wide reaching changes.
Again he is the car prodcution expert that you keep saying is crucial. Look at the products he was ultimately responsible for at Ford, BMW, Chrysler and GM.

All that to say, unfortunately, this product led drive was not enough to save GM in its current state. The American public has been burned too many times in the past and it will take many years and many product cycles to change perception, just as it did for the Japanese imports when they first started selling decades ago. So a product specialist is not the key because they had one of the best who did effect tremendous change.

They need someone like Mullaly who made very swift, wide ranging decisions to clear the decades old ways of doing things at Ford - the same thing that GM needs. He knows product is key - hence the 2010 Taurus that he championed - but he knew that disfucntional management layers were the areas that really needed to be tackled extensively and decisively before the good product being produced cold be sustained. If you know anything about Mullaly and what he did at Ford you will know that he made common sense product decisions based, not on his knowledge of car production (zero) but based on, like I said, common sense. Why kill the Taurus brand and replace it with the 500 when no one knows what 500 means and when brand building takes billions? That was based on his layman's knowledge of a car he knew from the 90's.

thanks divvie. the more you read financial statements of GM the more you understand how bad their situation is anyway. it also helps to understand how they made so many super basic mistakes. also the more you read financial statements of the competition (let it be honda or toyota) the more you understand how toasted GM really is and how professional honda and toyota are. they are being literally easy on their American counterparts to avoid retaliation, they are not even fighting and their mkt share grows anyway. ford is a different story, but made some of that basic mistakes too, not all of them.

i'm beginning to think that the idea from DC is for GM not to exist, but to do it in a politically correct way. there's huge overcapacity even with plants already closed or scheduled to close, both in usa and overseas. the pension fund guaranty doesn't cover health care and doesn't adjust for inflation. so taking the pensions when higher inflation shows up will be more manageable than right now.

se10024:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz2eCFoafXk

lol

that could have been done with a fiat too! a fiat 600 for ex.

I think Yugo bought the tooling that FIAT was about to destroy. No joke -- I'm too lazy to Dogpile it, but you'll probably find the story.

lol. by "destroy" you mean "ship to a FIAT plant in a third world country for its local market"?

Yes, just as FIAT will now ship their discarded tooling to Auburn Hills, Michigan (or thereabout).

lol. as an econ prof once told me "USA is not a banana republic, is a set of 50 banana republics".

here's another fuel efficient option
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525318,00.html

Stylin'!!!

what a great brand! my boy loves everything made by these guys.

I used to have a Little Tikes car when I was younger. I eventually upgraded to the Power Wheels or some sort of car with a motor. A few years ago Ford made a car that looks liek a giant Little Tikes car:

http://images.usatoday.com/money/autos/_photos/2002-01-03-la-ford-think-rear.jpg

lol, it reminds me of the red ford fiesta of a friend. once we were coming back after a party. we gave a ride to a very tall guy that got squeezed in the back. he was so drunk that the next week he talked about the car as if it were a pick up. omg!

This is for admin...
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAMkpGBb7m5U

Who did we pick to figure out how to fix the automobile industry? We picked two investment bankers,” Gerstner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff” airing today. “It’s sort of like asking the arsonist to run the fire department.”

Gerstner, who ran IBM from 1993 to 2002, said the problems that drove GM to a June 1 bankruptcy filing and necessitated about $65 billion in government aid are similar to those IBM faced in the early 1990s. Both firms, he said, became insular and lost sight of changes in the industry and among customers.

‘Looking Inside’

“GM has a culture of looking inside,” said Gerstner, who was an executive at American Express Co. and RJR Nabisco Inc. before joining IBM. “It denied the fact that customers really didn’t want the products they had. They wanted to stay with what they did.”

Sorry I had to revive this thread in light of another quarter of rising earnings announced today. Game ain't over but anyone want to revise their opinions on such topics as "what is wrong with corporate America" or whether an outsider could run an American car company?

Sometimes having an outsider brought in can be very positive. Lou Gerstner of IBM & Alan Mulally of Ford are two arguably good examples where that worked. One criticism of G.M has been that the same people who made bad decisions are still in charge. Always promoting from within sometimes creates an insular company unopen to new ideas or having the ability of introspection.

Sometimes an outsider can add new direction to really build a business. Much more often, though, there's indiscriminate cost-cutting and accounting hanky-panky, resulting in "another quarter of rising earnings". I think we're looking at the latter here.

G.M. is a weird situation. We're seeing classic crony capitalism going on. They bought a subprime auto-lender and magically auto loans are exempt from the consumer oversight agency. We're investigating Toyota for safety issues and we pretended that the g.m. has paid back the Treasury.

Akerson sounds like a disaster. He's a deal maker. I would not expect a cost cutter, but someone who is looking to buy and sell businesses. G.M. will be in bankuptcy again.

GM's most recent round of investments vividly demonstrates the change. At last week's Shanghai Auto Show, GM announced it would spend $11 billion on new production facilities in China by 2016, creating some 6,000 new jobs there. By contrast, GM has invested only $8.5 billion in U.S. operations since its 2009 bankruptcy, and since 2005 the number of workers it employs in North America has fallen by 76,000, according to the industry publication Automotive News

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324482504578451410328454302.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop