ALT-1 Why its no Surprise that Gm is no Longer Number one
Since the gas lines of the late 70's and early 80's GM ignored the consumer crisis and continued to produce the cars that GM could make the most money on and ignore the needs of the consumer. At the time I owned an advertising agency in south Florida. I had a variety of foreign and domestic car dealers as clients including Toyota, Cadillac, Buick and a dealers association. I recall a Car and Driver article around 1979 that pointed out how the "new" Cadillac Seville used the same chassis and equipment under the hood, motor etc., as the Chevy Nova but added power windows and a few other bells and whistles. Those slight changes netted GM several thousand additional dollars in factory profits.
Additionally at the time GM national advertising focused on how far your car could go on a tank of gas without stopping. "You can go 355 miles without a fill-up." You needed to drive that far to find a gas station that had any gas. You may recall that not only was gas scarce but prices started to shoot up. Toyota was pushing fuel economy.
The fact that Toyota, Mazda and Honda started to secure more dealerships and increased sales and this did not wake up the GM's at GM is a testament to their management's arrogance and ignorance. I wonder if anyone actually got out and tried to talk to the owner of a Toyota?
At the time there was a great deal of consumer loyalty for American products. My father, a veteran of the Pacific theater in WWll, would not even ride in my Toyota. Still we had buying trend analysis and each point of competitive gain should have been a slap in the face of American car manufacturers. GM felt that they could continue grow off of the "buy American" loyalty. My father has not bought a car in ten years. I have bought two and each of my three kids have bought a car. Do they remember WWll?
The point is GM and all of the other American auto manufacturers had the chance to understand their customer's in a changing market and do something about it. It's a world market out there now. Bigger opportunities so you don't need to be number one. You just need to be the best. To be the best you better be able to predict what the consumer wants and needs are. I bet that they are different in Beijing than they are in Detroit.
