Doug Ross @ Journal

GM's Woes

Friday's Wall Street Journal reported that GM's highly touted new models have seen disappointing sellthrough. Specifically, the Pontiac G6 (pictured at left, of Oprah giveaway fame) and Buick LaCrosse are moving slower than Kirstie Alley at the Golden Corral buffet bar.

Here's a memo to GM's senior execs from a lowly car-loving peon: stop building cars that you want to build... and start building cars that consumers want to buy.

Take a gander, for example, at the difference between the G6 Concept, at left, and the production car, above. The G6 has the typical crappy Pontiac grille, not the sweet mesh of the concept. The G6 has the standard GM-ish wheel configuration, not snazzy nineteens sheathed in swelled fenders like the concept. The concept car was something that consumers would buy. The G6 is the same sort of predigested pap -- designed for the masses and not the enthusiasts -- that GM has been trying to pitch for years. It hasn't worked for years -- and it's not working now.

Take a late-model Honda Civic, for example. Its lithe, compact body has been heavily influenced by the BMW 3-series sedan (GM: you could do a lot worse than to simply build a 3-series clone).

Here's a late-model Nissan Altima. Its visual cues appear borrowed directly from Audi's old, sleek A4. It's inexpensive, attractive, and reliable.

GM needs to pick out an existing, highly respected, Japanese or German brand, and start building clones. It could be Nissan/Infiniti, Toyota/Lexus, or BMW. It really doesn't matter. It's obvious GM's execs can't execute creatively -- with the possible exception of Cadillac -- so they need to follow the leaders.

Beautify your grilles, add blingified wheels, add quiet, torquey powerplants with 4-valve-per-cylinder technology... and, of course, improve quality. Incentivize the workers (unionized or not) with Consumer Reports' famous color-coded report cards. Better report cards: better comp packages for workers. Force the workers to have skin in the quality game using metrics everyone on the planet can understand.

Oh, and when you have a well-received concept car, try not to suck away all of its appealing features as it moves towards production.