Gm elimina il marchio Pontiac

[mbar]

Aggiungi Venezuela. ? il mezzo dei "Chavistas" e proprio Chavez ne ha regalati 600 ai suoi uomini pi? vicini.

[Guest]

non centra con pontiac, ma ? sempre argomento GM



[url="http://www.omniauto.it/magazine/8511/hummer-diventa-cinese"]http://www.omniauto.it/magazine/8511/hummer-diventa-cinese[/url]

[mbar]

L'articolo, tratto da "The Economist" ? molto interessante. Suggerisco, a chi legge l'inglese e c'ha lo stomaco (la storia ? deprimente) di leggerlo.





The decline and fall of General Motors



Detroitosaurus wrecks

Jun 4th 2009

From The Economist print edition



The lessons for America and the car industry from the biggest industrial collapse ever



Illustration by Derek Bacon







THE demise of GM had been expected for so long that when it finally died there was barely a whimper. Wall Street was unmoved. Congress did not draw breath. America shrugged. Yet the indifference with which the news was received should not obscure its importance. A company which once sold half the cars in America, employed in its various guises as many people as the combined populations of Nevada and Delaware and was regarded as a model for managers all over the world has just gone under; and its collapse holds important lessons about management, about government and about the future of the car industry (see article).



Government and GM: a fatal mixture

GM?s architect, Alfred Sloan, never had Henry Ford?s entrepreneurial or technical genius, but he had organisation. He designed his company around the needs of his customers (?a car for every purse and purpose?). The divisional structure he created in the 1920s, with professional managers reporting to a head office through strict financial monitoring, was adopted by other titans of American business, such as GE, Dupont and IBM before the model spread across the rich world.



Although this model was brilliantly designed for domination, when the environment changed it proved disastrously inflexible. The problem in the 1970s was not really the arrival of better, smaller, lighter Japanese cars; it was GM?s failure to respond in kind. Rather than hitting back with superior products, the company hid behind politicians who appeared to help it in the short term. Rules on fuel economy distorted the market because they had a loophole for pickups and other light trucks?a sop to farmers and tool-toting artisans. The American carmakers exploited that by producing squadrons of SUVs, while the government restricted the import of small, efficient Japanese cars. If Detroit had spent less time lobbying for government protection and more on improving its products it might have fared better. Sensible fuel taxes would have hurt for a while, but unlike market-distorting fuel-efficiency rules, they would have forced GM to evolve.



As for the health and pension costs which have helped sink GM, the company and the government bear joint responsibility for those too. After the war GM rejected a mutual scheme that the unions wanted because it smacked of socialism; and around the same time, the company agreed to give retired workers full pensions and health care for life. But if successive administrations had dealt with America?s expensive and inadequate health care?a problem with which Barack Obama is now wrestling (see article)?the cost of those union demands would have been far lower. None of GM?s competitors has had to shoulder costs per worker anything like as heavy: until an agreement in 2007 with the union, each car in Detroit carried about $1,400 in extra pension and health-care costs compared with the foreign-owned competitors in America.



GM, Ford and Chrysler tried to improve: by 2006 they had almost caught up with Japanese standards of efficiency and even quality. But by then GM?s share of the American market had fallen to below a quarter. Rounds of closures and job cuts were difficult to negotiate with unions, and were always too little too late. Gradually the cars got better, but Americans had moved on. The younger generation of carbuyers stayed faithful to their Toyotas, Hondas or Mercedes assembled in the new cheaper car factories below the Mason-Dixon line. GM and the other American firms were left with the older buyers who were, literally, dying out.



GM?s demise should not be read as a harbinger of doom for the car industry. All around the world people want wheels: a car tends to be the first big purchase a family makes once its income rises much above $5,000 a year, in purchasing-power terms. At the same time as people in developing countries are getting richer, more efficient factories and better designs are making cars more affordable. That is why the IMF forecasts that the world will have nearly 3 billion cars in 2050, compared with around 700m cars today. In the next five or six years the Chinese will overtake the Americans in terms of annual car sales: in 40 years? time the Chinese will have almost as many cars as exist in the whole of the world now. Indeed, GM?s own experience abroad shows the promise of emerging markets. Brazil has long been a source of profits, and GM has a leading position in China.



Yet although the long-term prospects for sales growth look excellent overall, the car industry has a problem: it needs to shrink dramatically. At present, there?s enough capacity globally to make 90m vehicles a year, but demand is little more than 60m in good economic times. Even as the big global manufacturers have been building new factories in emerging markets, governments in slow-growing rich-world markets have been bribing them to keep capacity open there.



Because the industry employs so many people and is a repository of high technology, governments are easily lured into the belief that car firms must be supported when times are tough. Hence Mr Obama?s $50 billion rescue of GM; and hence, too, the German government?s financial backing for the sale of Opel, GM?s European arm, to Magna, a Canadian parts-maker backed by a Russian state-owned bank. German politicians have made it clear that they plan to keep German factories open even if others elsewhere in Europe have to close. At least the American rescue recognises the need to remove capacity from the market: GM will, as a result of the deal, lose 14 factories, 29,000 workers and 2,400 dealers.



It could still be a great business

For all its peculiarities, the car industry is no dinosaur?Toyota, for instance, is a byword for manufacturing excellence. But the unevolved GM deserved extinction. Detroit employed so many people and figured so large in American culture that governments felt they had to protect it; but in doing so, they made it vulnerable to less-coddled competitors from abroad. By trying to keep their car industry big, America?s leaders ended up preventing it from becoming good. There is a lesson in that which all governments would do well to learn.

[funnycar]

Mi sento molto la "Cassandra" della situazione perch? nutro poche speranze circa la possibilit? di rinverdire vecchi allori ormai rinsecchiti.

Pochissime persone al mondo hanno compreso l'importanza del centenario "Ford model T", lo scorso anno: automobile al posto dei cavalli, in pratica una rivoluzione avvenuta cent'anni fa e mai pi? realizzata, da nessuno.

Ancor meno cervelloni hanno intuito che il processore (il chip del computer) era l'esempio lampante da seguire in epoca di globalizzazione: hanno invece continuato a proporre scatole di plastica motorizzate da ingordi bevitori di petrolio per far piacere agli emiri, i quali, in cambio realizzano impianti esclusivamente per la F1 dotati di suites con aria condizionata, ma non si curano di eliminare la sabbia dall'asfalto gi? torrido di suo, ad esclusivo beneficio di un paio di dozzine di "cavalieri del rischio" stapagati come e pi? dei "pedatori" del calcio.

Nel 1967 con 1.500.000 lire (l'equivalente di odierni ? 750.00) si acquistava una Fiat 124 T (cambio a 5 marce) mentre il computer di Apollo allunato nel 1969 (4 Luglio) era inferiore a qualsiasi attuale iPod nel taschino dei jeans di un minorenne: se la famosa legge di Moore per il computer valesse anche per le automobili ... dovremmo farci pagare per acquistare il mezzo di trasporto pi? inefficiente mai messo sul mercato che funziona con il combustibile meno adatto, la benzina (ridicola percentuale di idrocarburi naturali raffinati ad altissimo costo economico ed ambientale).

Si sa che esistono studi, prototipi ed esemplari perfettamente funzionanti di motori a ciclo Otto (modificato) che potrebbero bere canna da zucchero o mais, ma la cosa non ? mai piaciuta a chi ieri, oggi e domani, ha chiesto, chiede, e chieder? ancora miliardidi euro e di dollari per continuare a produrre e commercializzare un motore che "? sostanzialmente quello di Otto e Benz" (Henry "Smokey" Yunick).

Una vettura acquistata grazie agli "incentivi" costa effettivamente il doppio di ci? che ci sembra di pagare perch? ci viene subdolamente chiesto di rimediare agli errori del passato (ed io me ne sento, in piccola parte, responsabile perch? contemporaneo a quell'epoca). Nessuno tra di noi (voi) ricorda gli sforzi compiuti dall'industria aeronautica per superare la "barriera del suono": se soltanto il 10% degli investimenti in quel tipo di ricerca avesse riguardato il motore a combustione interna, oggi avremmo una 127 ("fire") che potrebbe percorrere 50 chilometri con un litro, produrre energia elettrica per l'abitazione e servire contemporaneamente da dissalatore per produrre acqua potabile non inquinata.

La Fiat si ? "differenziata" entrando nel nucleare, idroelettrico, medicale, aeronavale e spaziale dimenticando di essere "la" Fabbrica Italiana Automobili (Torino) contribuendo a creare le premesse per lo sboom della attuale crisi finanziaria globale: del tutto identiche le politiche delle altre Fabbriche (vedi anche Opel, chi si ricorda la Commodore?) che ora preferiscono chi "non ha le capacit? tecniche, progettuali ed organizzative" (da Quattroruote all'epoca durante la quale i "giapponesi" erano solo clonatori dei modelli europei o. al massimo, "produttori di granaglie").

Gino Bartali diceva "? tutto sbagliato, ? tutto da rifare", gi? negli anni '50 ed aveva ragione!!!!!!!!!!!!

[olds67]

@funny:non si pu? non approvare quello che hai scritto,? quello he tutti i giorni penso.

[henry's garage]

[quote name='nomads' post='208139' date='5/5/2009, 01:42']ci sono case europee con fior di motori esagerati,V6,V8;v12.......ma hanno fatto modelli belli,appetibili,e potenti....e con un occhio all inquinamento.....dunque la causa nn st? li,ma nell incapacit? di sviluppare nuove idee.......secondo te produrre una Firebird uguale ad una Camaro ? una buona idea?[/quote]



Hai capito tutto

[Piero]

[quote name='funnycar' post='217976' date='5/6/2009, 22:11']Mi sento molto la "Cassandra" della situazione perch? nutro poche speranze circa la possibilit? di rinverdire vecchi allori ormai rinsecchiti.

Pochissime persone al mondo hanno compreso l'importanza del centenario "Ford model T", lo scorso anno: automobile al posto dei cavalli, in pratica una rivoluzione avvenuta cent'anni fa e mai pi? realizzata, da nessuno.

Ancor meno cervelloni hanno intuito che il processore (il chip del computer) era l'esempio lampante da seguire in epoca di globalizzazione: hanno invece continuato a proporre scatole di plastica motorizzate da ingordi bevitori di petrolio per far piacere agli emiri, i quali, in cambio realizzano impianti esclusivamente per la F1 dotati di suites con aria condizionata, ma non si curano di eliminare la sabbia dall'asfalto gi? torrido di suo, ad esclusivo beneficio di un paio di dozzine di "cavalieri del rischio" stapagati come e pi? dei "pedatori" del calcio.

Nel 1967 con 1.500.000 lire (l'equivalente di odierni ? 750.00) si acquistava una Fiat 124 T (cambio a 5 marce) mentre il computer di Apollo allunato nel 1969 (4 Luglio) era inferiore a qualsiasi attuale iPod nel taschino dei jeans di un minorenne: se la famosa legge di Moore per il computer valesse anche per le automobili ... dovremmo farci pagare per acquistare il mezzo di trasporto pi? inefficiente mai messo sul mercato che funziona con il combustibile meno adatto, la benzina (ridicola percentuale di idrocarburi naturali raffinati ad altissimo costo economico ed ambientale).

Si sa che esistono studi, prototipi ed esemplari perfettamente funzionanti di motori a ciclo Otto (modificato) che potrebbero bere canna da zucchero o mais, ma la cosa non ? mai piaciuta a chi ieri, oggi e domani, ha chiesto, chiede, e chieder? ancora miliardidi euro e di dollari per continuare a produrre e commercializzare un motore che "? sostanzialmente quello di Otto e Benz" (Henry "Smokey" Yunick).

Una vettura acquistata grazie agli "incentivi" costa effettivamente il doppio di ci? che ci sembra di pagare perch? ci viene subdolamente chiesto di rimediare agli errori del passato (ed io me ne sento, in piccola parte, responsabile perch? contemporaneo a quell'epoca). Nessuno tra di noi (voi) ricorda gli sforzi compiuti dall'industria aeronautica per superare la "barriera del suono": se soltanto il 10% degli investimenti in quel tipo di ricerca avesse riguardato il motore a combustione interna, oggi avremmo una 127 ("fire") che potrebbe percorrere 50 chilometri con un litro, produrre energia elettrica per l'abitazione e servire contemporaneamente da dissalatore per produrre acqua potabile non inquinata.

La Fiat si ? "differenziata" entrando nel nucleare, idroelettrico, medicale, aeronavale e spaziale dimenticando di essere "la" Fabbrica Italiana Automobili (Torino) contribuendo a creare le premesse per lo sboom della attuale crisi finanziaria globale: del tutto identiche le politiche delle altre Fabbriche (vedi anche Opel, chi si ricorda la Commodore?) che ora preferiscono chi "non ha le capacit? tecniche, progettuali ed organizzative" (da Quattroruote all'epoca durante la quale i "giapponesi" erano solo clonatori dei modelli europei o. al massimo, "produttori di granaglie").

Gino Bartali diceva "? tutto sbagliato, ? tutto da rifare", gi? negli anni '50 ed aveva ragione!!!!!!!!!!!![/quote]





Perfetto, e, my two cents, le soluzioni che stanno adottando sono il classico "un colpo al cerchio e l'altro alla botte" si' ,insomma,si accontenta qualche lobby qua',se ne accontenta qualcun'altra la'...tutto il mondo e' paese!!!

[Guest]

Noi, tramite la nostra passione siamo legati all'auto soprattutto per la tradizione e per i fasti delle auto (soprattutto americane) del passato.

Ma le grandi case automobilistiche non possono presentare una linea di prodotti legati al passato (motori V8 che inquinano e consumano, carrozzerie pesanti che richiedono grossi motori potenti per muoversi con disinvoltura, auto dotate di miliardi di diavolerie elettroidrauliche o elettropneumatiche o a depressione... insomma, tutto quello il cui nome finiva con "o-matic").

Le esigenze della gente sono cambiate, l'ambiente che ci circonda non pu? essere sfruttato e abusato all' infinito.Le case automobilistiche americane non hanno saputo rinnovarsi e sono state sorpassate in patria, dai prodotti con gli occhi a mandorla, perch? la gente ha iniziato a preferire la sostanza all'apparenza.

Che le auto siano belle, importa a pochi, la maggior parte dei clienti cercano un'auto onesta, che costi poco e che abbia un elevato standard di qualit? e che permetta di spendere poco nella manutenzione e nel mantenimento, fino che non arriva il momento di sostituirla senza troppi patemi d'animo.

Fortunatamente rimangono le storiche, che rappresentano l'ancora di salvezza di chi vive intensamente la passione per l'auto.

Francamente se scompaiono i marchi storici di Detroit, non mi interessa. Mi dispiace infinitamente per quei poveri disgraziati che hanno perso, stanno perdendo e perderanno il lavoro.

[mbar]

Che le auto siano belle, importa a pochi, la maggior parte dei clienti cercano un'auto onesta, che costi poco e che abbia un elevato standard di qualit? e che permetta di spendere poco nella manutenzione e nel mantenimento, fino che non arriva il momento di sostituirla senza troppi patemi d'animo.

Secondo me proprio perch? le case USA la pensano cos? che sono andate a catafascio. La gente vuole auto moderne E BELLE, ma la GM non le fa da 20 e passa anni e per questo ? andata a catafascio. Le case USA hanno voluto fare auto affidabili ma stilisticamente schifose, e si ? visto dove sono andate a finire. Se avessero seguito l'esempio dei costruttori europei di successo, che hanno da sempre dato importanza all'heritage ed hanno sempre fatto auto con un certo appeal stilistico, rispettando le esigenze del momento (Audi, Porsche, Mercedes BMW) adesso sarebbero ancora in piedi. La Fiat lo ha fatti - tardi - con l'Alfa.

[Guest]

A tal proposito consiglierei di scaricare il film "Who killed the electric car", come avevo consigliato nella sezione video.

E' la triste storia della EV1, sperimentata con successo dalla GM e che, a suo tempo. aveva entusiasmato non poco.

Tutte le auto sperimentali, alla fine, sono state demolite non perche' rappresentavano un'insuccesso ma perche' alcune lobby (chissa' quali..) erano contrarie al mezzo elettrico.







[url="http://www.mininova.org/tor/1826257"]http://www.mininova.org/tor/1826257[/url]

[mbar]

[url="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1903780,00.html"]QUI[/url] oltre ad un articolo, trovate la pubblicit? che la GM sta trasmettendo in modo continuo sulle tv americane. Mi ha lasciato piuttosto freddino.

[bronzo]

[quote name='mbar' post='218098' date='6/6/2009, 14:42']

Che le auto siano belle, importa a pochi, la maggior parte dei clienti cercano un'auto onesta, che costi poco e che abbia un elevato standard di qualit? e che permetta di spendere poco nella manutenzione e nel mantenimento, fino che non arriva il momento di sostituirla senza troppi patemi d'animo.

Secondo me proprio perch? le case USA la pensano cos? che sono andate a catafascio. La gente vuole auto moderne E BELLE, ma la GM non le fa da 20 e passa anni e per questo ? andata a catafascio. Le case USA hanno voluto fare auto affidabili ma stilisticamente schifose, e si ? visto dove sono andate a finire. Se avessero seguito l'esempio dei costruttori europei di successo, che hanno da sempre dato importanza all'heritage ed hanno sempre fatto auto con un certo appeal stilistico, rispettando le esigenze del momento (Audi, Porsche, Mercedes BMW) adesso sarebbero ancora in piedi. La Fiat lo ha fatti - tardi - con l'Alfa.

[/quote]



Concordo TOTALMENTE con mbar........

[mbar]

secondo me gli indovini sono tutti ciarlatani. Anche fare previsioni serie (non indovinare) ? sempre difficile e complesso, pi? un'arte che scienza. Spulciando gli archivi del settimanale "The Economist", ho per? trovato un'articolo con una previsione che si ? rivelata esatta, purtroppo. Questo articolo del 1989 indicava che la strada che la GM aveva intrapreso avrebbe portato inevitabilmente alla bancarotta. Che si ? poi incredibilmente verificata, sigh.



On a clear day you can still see General Motors

Dec 2nd 1989

From The Economist print edition



The 1990s will be General Motors' toughest decade. Is the world's biggest manufacturer heading for break-up or oblivion?





SOON after General Motors's chairman, Mr Roger Smith, drives the first car off the assembly line of his company's Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee next summer, he will ride off into a comfortable retirement. The company he leaves behind faces a bleaker future.



During his nine-year reign at the top of the world's biggest carmaker, Mr Smith has spent billions of dollars and overseen huge reorganisations to little avail. Crippled by a sclerotic bureaucracy, GM watched helplessly as its share of the all-important American car market tumbled from 46% in 1980 to barely 35% this year. Now Japanese carmakers are set to boost their production in America just as GM cuts back still further. If the once-mighty GM can not find a way to reverse its slide, the next decade might be the company's last. By the turn of the century, break-up or bankruptcy (and the inevitable government rescue) could well be the fate of a company which was once America's proudest manufacturer.



Saturn will be the key to GM's survival. At first, GM arrogantly dismissed Toyota and other Japanese competitors as merely makers of little cars that got lucky in an oil crisis. When GM belatedly woke up to the Japanese challenge, it exhibited the big-company knee-jerk reaction: throw truckloads of money at the problem. Many of the billions it spent on robots and other new technology have been wasted. Saturn is the attempt of a chastened GM to re-invent carmaking from a “blank sheet of paper”. Yet if Saturn is a success, the immense task of transforming the rest of the company's vast empire still lies ahead. If Saturn is a flop, GM will face naked the remorseless advance of the Japanese.



By the mid-1990s the so-called Japanese “transplant” factories in the United States and Canada will be making more than 2m vehicles a year in addition to the cars the Japanese import (now limited to 2.3m vehicles). With new-car sales in America set to fall below 10m this year, the industry is already haunted by overcapacity. Even worse for GM, Japanese transplants can build cars for an estimated $500-800 cheaper than many American-owned plants. Because their cars are better designed and marketed, the Japanese also frequently avoid offering the $1,500 discounts which are destroying the profit margins of American competitors.



Saturn is supposed to close the efficiency gap, which has resulted in GM's North American car operations losing an estimated $300m in the third quarter this year. Throughout the 1980s, GM has invested $80 billion modernising its operations worldwide (nearly three times its present market capitalisation). That spending includes some of the $2.5 billion to buy EDS to mastermind a group-wide computerisation drive. GM then spent $700m buying back GM shares from EDS's founder Mr Ross Perot as the price of ousting the outspoken critic from GM's board. Another $5.2 billion went to buy Hughes Aerospace in a yet-to-be-proved attempt to feed more space-age technology into carmaking.



Yet much of the advanced technology GM acquired at such high cost hindered rather than improved productivity. Run-away robots started welding doors shut at the new Detroit-Hamtramck Cadillac plant. Luckily for Ford and Chrysler, poverty prevented them from indulging in the same orgy of spending on robots. After wrenching management changes, some of Ford's factories are now achieving near-Japanese levels of productivity.



Saturn will use some of the most advanced manufacturing technology available, but will concentrate on the more effective use of people. GM had to resort to a joint venture with Toyota to learn that people are what count in manufacturing. Despite this benefit, the joint-venture factory in California has shown that GM's fundamental weaknesses remain.



Saturn is to be run as a separate company within GM, free of the smothering embrace of Detroit. But even with all its advantages, Saturn's future is not guaranteed because the Japanese are racing still further ahead. They are opening research-and-design centres in America to become fully integrated carmakers there. They are also moving into the market for luxury and performance cars. In the 1990s Honda could overtake Chrysler as America's third-biggest car company. If that happens, the biggest loser will be the American company with the most to lose: GM.



Mr Smith remains unruffled. He says a lot of GM's problems have been put right and that the company is now well positioned. Its spending has gone to build new plants or to modernise old ones. But he cannot expect to run the plants at full capacity. More probably, as the chart indicates, GM's market share has been permanently eroded. So more plant closures will be needed. By the mid-1990s one in four of its 130,000 managers may have lost their jobs. The company has already cut its worldwide payroll by 100,000 since 1981 to some 750,000.



With sales last year of $110 billion—roughly equivalent to the GDP of Taiwan—and worldwide production at 8m vehicles, still twice Toyota's level, GM could keep cutting back for years as the Japanese expand. But continued “down-sizing” will inevitably provoke a crisis, forcing a traumatic overhaul of the company's baroque corporate structure, says Mr James Womack, director of the International Motor Vehicle Programme—a worldwide five-year car industry study being conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ford faced such a crisis in the early 1980s and survived. “Ford went right to the edge and looked over,” recalls Mr Womack. “Ford realised it had to start worrying about how to avoid the abyss rather than electing the next president.” If GM's moment of truth comes later, rather than sooner, it might not survive intact.



Mr Smith's re-organisations have swept away some feudal dynasties at GM. But he failed to address a deeper, cultural malaise, says Ms Maryann Keller, a Wall Street motor-industry analyst. In her recent book, “Rude Awakening”, Ms Keller says Mr Smith found himself hopelessly entangled in a complex corporate culture that resisted change. He did little to control the power of central-office staff over operating divisions or the finance staff over the entire company. Under Mr Smith, a finance man, GM's bean counters continued to rule. For too long, says Ms Keller, GM has “hidden behind a manipulation of the numbers rather than facing its problems head on.”



GM points to its record net profit in 1988 of $4.9 billion, up 37% from 1987, as proof of recovery. But Ms Keller says that GM's record year was due more to accounting changes than to the sale of cars. Even if GM's profits recover for another year or two, she warns, “the victory is bound to be short-lived unless change occurs at the very core of its corporate culture.”



If the critics are correct, Mr Smith's successor will have to undertake a wholesale reorganisation of GM management to reverse the company's decline. The chances of such a reformer emerging are not impossible (witness the surprise arrival of Russia's Mr Mikhail Gorbachev), but they are slim. When the puffs of smoke from the company's Detroit headquarters appear, the final choice of the next chairman will largely be that of the strong-willed Mr Smith himself. An outsider can be ruled out almost entirely: top management at GM is a closed shop. Even those who have joined late in their careers have found themselves unable to make the final cut. Mr Elmer Johnson, a Chicago lawyer, headed back home last year after a brief stint as an executive vice president. He harboured ambitions of being the reformer who launched GM's perestroika.



The next chairman is likely to come from among half a dozen loyal, long-term GM executives. At the top of everyone's list is 56-year-old Mr Robert Stempel, who became president a little more than two years ago. Mr Stempel is a big, blunt-talking man with a strong background in engineering—the proverbial “product man”.



That makes him an attractive choice. GM desperately needs new products. It claims plenty are coming, but the company is still struggling to shed its image as a builder of mediocre, look-alike cars—at least in America. In Europe, where new investment has paid off better, a string of successes was reflected in the $2.7 billion which international operations added to GM's profit last year. Yet the battle for market share in Europe is increasing with the formation of a single EC market and with coming competition from East European exports. DRI, an economic-forecasting group, also thinks that a two-year decline in West European car sales will start next year.



GM has tried to give its American cars more flair by reorganising their production into two self-contained business units: Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac and Chevrolet-Pontiac-GM Canada. Something much more drastic is needed. If Mr Smith's Saturn project is not that something, GM could end its days as a decaying monument to the glory days of American manufacturing.

[Guest]

le varie Mustang,le nuove challenger,New Camaro possono essere un idea di come poteva essere diverso il destino delle Americane,se si fossero svegliati prima.La Mustang vende bene,le Challenger mi sembrano sulla buona strada.....provate a pensare una New Camaro con un motore adatto anche per l europa.....pensate non si venderebbe?se poi aprissro delle reti ufficiali dove poterle comprare a prezzi vicini a quelli USA(senza finire nelle mani degli squali paralleli),sicuramente invece di spendere 25000 eur per una Clio RACING .....qualche giovane patentato potrebbe pensarci