Comments on: General Motors and Renault: another bad idea

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 20:01:47 +0000

Too many brands for people to keep track of, and I don’t think we can really go back to the simplistic “increasing size and luxury” model. For example, does BMW make luxury or performance cars? How is Pontiac different from Buick? Infiniti currenly makes a car above Cadillac’s best (Q45) as well as one below Caddy’s lowest. I don’t see them giving up the Q easily.

Really, GM is big enough. They are the world’s largest automaker. To stay that way they don’t need to waste their time on digesting another company. they need to focus on what MADE them the world’s largest automaker. The leadership can’t divert their attention from the all-important task of getting everyone’s nose to the grindstone (to grind their metal better, not their noses, by the way) and streamlining/modernizing the behemoth.

By: Stéphane Dumas

Stéphane Dumas — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 18:12:51 +0000

in my idea of modern “Sloanism”, I forgotted to mention Infiniti and Nissan. I taugh about how it could be positionned, a) the 1st way is letting Cadillac going more upscale against Maybach, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, letting the void for Infiniti. or b) Infiniti could be positionned below Cadillac current position and taking the role of “Junior Companion”, a role a bit similar to what LaSalle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaSalle did from 1927 to 1940 as a companion of Cadillac , Infiniti will be positionned to sold only RWD vehicules (with optionnal AWD/4WD system) while Saab will stay in FWD territory. Then there Nissan who’s more difficult to position.

Here what I think of modern sloanism for some markets from entry-level to “high-top upper level”
1)Europe
-Chevrolet
-Renault
-Nissan
-Opel
-Saab (FWD only)/Infiniti (RWD only)
-Cadillac
-GMC Trucks

2)North America (US and Canada)
-Chevrolet
-Pontiac
-Saturn
-Nissan
-Buick
-Saab (FWD)/Infiniti (RWD)
-Cadillac

3)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Venezuela, Costa Rica,…)
-Chevrolet
-Nissan
-Renault
-Saab/Infiniti
-Cadillac

I guess Oceania (Australia-New Zealand), Southeast Asia, India, Africa and the Middle-East will have the same sloanism structure as Latin America

By: Stéphane Dumas

Stéphane Dumas — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:43:07 +0000

Maybe it might be the time to open in the weblog, the following subject, “Ford and Renault, better idea then GM and Renault?” ;-)
there lots of talks about it at
http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36105
http://www.cheersandgears.com/forums/index.php?showforum=45 (I mistyped the url of http://www.cheersandgears.com sorry for the inconvience ^^;)

By: Stéphane Dumas

Stéphane Dumas — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 17:06:32 +0000

Steve posted an interesting point, however Dave isn’t alone, there similar critics on Autoblog and the GM Forums fansites GMInsidenews http://www.gminsidenews.com and Cheersandgears http://www.cheerandgears.com

I found a French link about this who can be interesting to read at http://www.renaultusa.org/renaultgm.html you need to use Google translation or Alta-vista to translate from French to English. The main obstacle will be in Germany when a combined Renault and Opel would face the opposition of anti-trust monopoly laws. Unless putting a modern “sloanism” stucture in Europe Chevrolet the lower-priced entry, Renault as a lower mid-priced line-up while Opel is the upper mid-priced line-up, Saab and Cadillac takes the upper-priced levels by playing the niche market cards.

However, Bill Ford seems interesting to an “alliance”, perhaps Ghosn will use plan B if the deal with Kerkorian and Wagonner don’t go furter.

Then Toyota almost reached GM spot would have to work hard again to reach “GNR”/”GRN”/”GMNR” or “GMRN”