Robert Townsend's Up the Organization (New York: Knopf said:
...we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
AH, well, here's the crux of the issue. Nearly every other car company can trace it's roots back to a main name or one company that successively merged or consumed the others. Some of the Japanese even now have their own 'created' brands, but started as a single company. Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan (Datsun), Daimler-Chrysler...
GM is the only one that was created as an homolgamation of companies - where the individual companies when acquired by Durant in the early 20th century managed to maintain their seperate identities. Even to the extent of separate retail outlets (dealerships), engineering, powertrain, manufacturing facilities...
It must have become obvious at one point that one company is more resource-efficient than 5, 6, or 7 duplicate companies under one umbrella corporation - hence the idea of trying to centralize the nameplates - various combinations of mergings, namplate reorganizations, groupings and the like ensued.
BOC, CPC, Lansing Automotive Division, MFD, Small Car, MCD, Truck & Bus, ... my head spins with the reorganizations when I think of it - just in the last 2 decades.
If you look at the least profitable portions of, say, FoMoCo, for example - Rover and Jaguar - these two latest acquisitions are the worst performing. They are also the portions of Ford that still have very separate engineering and development portions.
The problem is, when you acquire and merge the development, research, design, and engineering of a particular company,
how do you maintain the brand equity that has been built up to that point?.
The best way is that it should have been complete takeover and rebranding back in the 1915's and 1920's - before brand and name made so much of a difference. General Motors being the parent company, with NEW brands established as Buick, Olds, Cadillac, Oakland (Pontiac), chevy, GMC's predecessor are acquired. The mistake made (ah the sharpness of 85 year hindsight, huh?) was all of these continued as basically separate companies.
By the time GM got to be THE car company - the brand equity still worked because each division was exactly what everyone thought they were - an Olds was an Olds, a Chevy was a Chevy... ...and it was true, until it became obvious that to become more efficient certain areas were being severely duplicated. How many near 300-350 cid V8's do you need, anyway?
Instead of dealing with it when the money was flowing like water (merging dealers, changing brand names, killing and moving things are much easier when you're flush with cash), they spent it like drunken sailors on shore leave.
The easiest way to merge things but maintain the illusion of having different "companies" is exactly what became badge engineering. Platforms, with several different versions with as little differences as you can get away with, using the same engines... It works until the tactic becomes known, and as we all know, a tactic known is a tactic blown.
In it's heyday, the J-car, when combined as a platform, was THE largest selling compact car for many years.
GMC and Chevy trucks, when combined as a platform, outsell Ford trucks.
The problem is that the J-car had 5 different sales outlets, and the most riduculous of them (Caddy) cost GM a lot of image.
GMC and Chevy rely on two sales outlets to achieve their volume.
Now, GM is really in a predicament - they don't have the cash reserves to handle small changes in sales volume, so they can't afford to loose a single sale, much less three or five models. in a changing market that requires constant cash to keep up research and development. I think they DO have too many models, AND they have too many nameplates.
Roger Smith was a smart guy - I've never seen anyone who could leech a company as well as he did, line his nest with gold, stuff his pockets with platinum, and retire on the huge pension he set himself up with - and leave the shambles of a company behind for someone like Stempel to be scapegoat for. Smith did a lot of dumb things, but always seemed to get away with it. Total bean counter.
I still wonder what the heck everyone was thinking when they thought, "hey we have all these nameplates out there, let's MAKE UP ONE MORE!".
That's JUST what GM needed, ANOTHER nameplate just before and after two very rocky financial times (78-79, 88-89). More dealers. SEPARATE engineering, it's OWN powertrain that would be incompatible with any other...
Again, I'll have to look back at the number 2 world carmaker - Toyota. They use engine families. They aren't searching for that big marketing idea that will sell their cars. They don't even have particularly good dealers or styling. A lot of what they do
could be called badge engineering.
They sure know how to work together to engineer and produce vehicles, though. They aren't perfect, but they rarely duplicate effort, and are seldom scattered. Bit by bit they are attemting to become the number 1 vehicle maker in the world. Their engineering expertise is well-seasoned, centralized.
(no "this chevy guy is the best steering engineer in the world - they don't have anyone that can do powertrain, though, but those Oldsmobile engine trans guys are first class..." in toyota).
I think going to separate engines would be a disaster - the amount of duplication would quickly kill GM within a few years. Powertrains have the longest development and design time of any component in the car - longer even than exterior dies.
I certainly don't have the answers, but I am afraid the next few cuts at GM to same themselves will be like that Aron Ralston guy - the hiker that had to eventually cut his own trapped arm off to save his life.
