The headline is a little stronger than it needs to be. I don't think any brands are going away, at least not for the NA market. Internationally though I think they are taking a hard look at profitability and this is the key point:
The rest of the article though doesn't quite agree with me. It almost makes it sound like GM is going to pull an FCA and basically get out of the car business to sell trucks. I do not think that is what will happen, though they may axe some slower selling models and consolidate a platform to a single model in some cases. My expectation would be that they would strive to be competitive in all major market areas. Niche markets are a question mark where they are not part of a major brand strategy (i.e. Cadillac Vsport is excepted but I wouldn't hold out too much hope for a Cruze SS).“There’s a little bit more work that we’re doing in the international markets,” GM CEO Mary Barra told reporters on a conference call, reports Automotive News. “Our overall philosophy is that every country, every market segment has to earn its cost of capital.”
And naturally this makes me growl as the words as written are misleading:
Sigh. I mentioned this in another thread. You may question the intent, but the intent was never to sell many SSs. Period. It is misleading to leave it open, so the reader would conclude "I assume they aimed to sell as many of these as possible and they didn't, so it was a failure, and they stopped making it - all of that makes sense to me.". Except that's not what happened.GM could continue to get rid of its slow-selling cars, like it did by axing the Chevrolet SS.