My Years With General Motors newsletter

Part I: Abrogation of the Enterprise’s Principles

Dear General Motors; this means everyone: Executives, workers, board members, retirees, investors, dealers, suppliers, buyers of our brands.

The golden goose is dead. It shouldn’t have come to this, since the General Motors enterprise was built deliberately to be adaptable to any circumstances – to seize opportunities when times were good, and to retrench effectively when times were bad. When did you all decide that this strategic policy was no longer your responsibility?

I’m not going to say that GM should avoid bankruptcy. File today rather than Monday. It is the only avenue that makes sense, and in fact is simply the now-unavoidable admission that the company has been effectively bankrupt for years, but has merely been shifting the evidence from one pocket to another: One year product would be uncompetitive; another year there would be a financial loss. The proliferation of brands and markets added more shells to the game, but eventually it came down to pulling sales ahead from the next quarter by looting GMAC to offer free credit.

There is plenty of blame to go around.
It falls upon every constituency over the course of generations. The union and the dealer body are guilty of sins of commission, in seeking and instituting unfair advantages. The others are guilty of sins of omission, by angling ever for their “piece” of General Motors, even the crumbs.  read more »

by Joshua Davidson, Publisher, MyYearsWithGM.com and the AUDIOBOOK Edition of My Years with General Motors

IN PART I OF THIS NEWSLETTER (THE PRACTICAL HISTORY OF CHRYSLER, AND WHY IT HAS REACHED ITS LOGICAL END), I DISCUSSED THE EVOLUTION OF CHRYSLER’S “CULTURE OF CRISIS” THAT HAS HELPED IT SURVIVE NUMEROUS BRUSHES WITH BANKRUPTCY. AS IF ON CUE, FIAT HAS ARRIVED TO UNTIE CHRYSLER FROM THE RAILS. BUT TODAY’S DOMESTIC AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY NEEDS TO RATIONALIZE ITS EXISTENCE IN ACCORD WITH HARD REALITY, NOT A NOSTALGIC MIXTURE OF RACE GAS AND RED PAINT.

PART II: THE CHRYSLER-FIAT ALLIANCE: WHY DIDN’T YOU THINK OF THAT?  read more »

If there’s one thing that everyone eventually is forced to admit, it’s that you get what you pay for. Daimler and Cerberus have tried their hands at spinning Chrysler into gold, until the point where all they wanted was to untie the lead from around their necks. So who's paying for Fiat's “free” 35% of Chrysler?

by Joshua Davidson, Publisher, MyYearsWithGM.com and the AUDIOBOOK Edition of My Years with General Motors

WHILE IT HAS PUT MANY EXCITING PRODUCTS INTO THE MARKET IN ITS 85-YEAR HISTORY, CHRYSLER CORPORATION HAS ALWAYS EXCELLED IN PARTICULAR AT SELLING ITSELF. FOR THE THIRD TIME IN 10 YEARS, CHRYSLER HAS ATTRACTED A NEW PARTNER TO DANCE WITH, FIAT. BUT IT’S TIME TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THE MUSIC HAS STOPPED PLAYING.

PART I: CHRYSLER, A GREAT AMERICAN ENTERPRISE

In 1924, Walter P. Chrysler made a stir with his new car during the New York Automobile Exposition by placing it in the lobby of the nearby Commodore hotel, where he could buttonhole the journalists and financiers without the distraction of the other makes on the Exposition floor. But good as the car itself was, what Walter P. was selling was his management of the successful Buick brand until 1920, and the prospect that his new Chrysler Corporation would emulate GM’s success. Walter P. got the investment to put the Chrysler B-70 into production. Walter P. (who, until his untimely death in 1946, remained close friends with Alfred Sloan as the heads of rival automobile empires) did a masterful job of mimicking the General Motors tiered product portfolio with Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler. The “agile follower” strategy generally worked, and after World War II Chrysler surpassed crazy Henry’s Ford Motor Co. as the second-biggest producer.  read more » Never having the deep pockets of GM or Ford, Chrysler fell into a habitual boom-and-bust cycle. It would break the bank to climb atop a trend wave, and wipe out under the next one. The breathtaking 1957 “Forward Look” looked graceless and gaudy in 1960, but Chrysler had blown its capital converting to unibody construction. Chrysler muscle dominated the streets in the early 70s, but the lack of a subcompact left them flat-footed in the gasoline crisis.