M/T: General Motors: The Incredible Shrinking Automaker - The Big Picture

Non-repair car talk
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kevm14
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Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

M/T: General Motors: The Incredible Shrinking Automaker - The Big Picture

Post by kevm14 »

https://www.motortrend.com/news/general ... AA506C0001
Once automaker to the world, GM is now almost entirely dependent on just two markets
Daimler may have invented the automobile, and Ford may have invented the automobile factory, but General Motors invented the modern automobile company. When GM was founded in 1908, there were 253 automakers in the United States, all with entrepreneurs and engineers, dollar-men and dreamers, vying to make their fortunes with a technology that was going to change the world.

Henry Ford was the Bill Gates of the era, quick to grasp the potential of democratizing automobility. But GM's Alfred Sloan was in many ways its Steve Jobs, intuitively understanding that adding form to function made the automobile more than mere transport, that it could transform need into desire.

GM not only pioneered the automotive design studio. It pioneered the electric self-starter and automatic transmission, two innovations that helped make the automobile even more accessible. It did the fundamental scientific research that led to the development of the catalytic converter and the airbag. It was experimenting with electric vehicles and autonomous drive systems before Elon Musk was born. It helped design and engineer the only car to have ever driven on the moon.

For almost 80 years, GM bestrode the automotive landscape like a colossus, making and selling more cars than any other automaker in the world. It held the top spot on the Fortune 500 list for more than three decades. When GM CEO Charles "Engine Charlie" Wilson said in 1953 that he thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors—and, more famously, vice versa—it was simply accepted as fact.

No more.
I made this exact point in another thread:
And although GM paid back every cent it was obligated to pay to the Treasury, it has never really recovered. In the decade since, the company that was once the very definition of the power and strength and wealth of American capitalism has become the incredible shrinking automaker.
But ponder this: Of the 7.7 million vehicles GM made last year, almost 84 percent were sold in North America and China. Once automaker to the world, GM is now almost entirely dependent on just two markets. And even in its home market, GM is slipping: In booming 2004, GM's U.S. market share was 26 percent. Fifteen years later, it barely scrapes 18.
Unfortunately I thought this was going to be a much longer piece, digging into specific issues. Instead of just scrapes the surface and sort of calls out all of the symptoms without addressing anything deeper.
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