I worked at GM from 1978-81, and 1983-91, and from 1985-89 was with the GM-10 (W-Car) platform -- the mid-size cars of Chevrolet Lumina, Pontiac Grand Prix, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Buick Regal. And in 1990-91 I was a member of a Product Simplification / Complexity Reduction task force. You've hit most of the salient points about GM's decline, but there are so many more that contributed to it. Many parties, both inside and outside of GM, felt that one of GM's strengths was the 5 passenger car divisions. That was probably the case into the 1970s, but the growing popularity of both the Japanese and European imports with more focused and firmly defined vehicles ate away at GM's practice of offering "all things to all people in all products all the time" with nearly all of its products. All of the car divisions except for Cadillac (and later Saturn) had: full-sized cars (B-Bodies); mid-sized cars (A-Bodies); mid-sized specialty cars (A-Specials -- Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix, Olds Cutlass Supreme, and Buick Regal); compact cars (X-Bodies); sub-compacts (J-Cars); plus others that were specific to just one or two divisions, plus the C- and E-Bodies for Olds, Buick, and Cadillac. And all of those A, B, J, and X cars had the full array of body styles (2-door, 4-door, etc.) at each car division. And they all had base trim level models, higher-level trim models, and "sporty" models. And they were all competing with each other, as well as with Ford, Toyota, and all other manufacturers. It was just as great a sin for the Chevrolet Division General Manager to lose a sale to Pontiac as it was to lose a customer to Ford. The absurdity of this over-duplication was pointed out in the late 1980s by GM Canada which only had two sales channels: Chevrolet/Oldsmobile/Cadillac, and Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Cadillac. GM Canada raised the issue of having nearly identical Chevrolets and Oldsmobile models in the one channel's showrooms, and the same situation with Pontiac and Buicks in the other channel's stores. The "all things to all people in all products all the time" mindset wasn't mitigated by any kind of product czar, or even a designated office or committee, that could say to any of the divisions, "Thou shalt do this .... and thou shalt not do this other thing." For example, if Chevrolet is the designated "low-price" division for a given platform, and Buick is the designated "premium price" division, nobody had the authority to say, "Chevy, you do NOT need a leather interior," and "Buick, you do NOT need to have hand-crank windows and an AM-only radio," among other things. Another problem that GM management failed to recognize, let alone manage, was the proliferation of equipment choices (options) and the head-spinning confusion that generated among buyers as well as the dealer network. When something new or an improved iteration of an existing item came along, they were only too eager to offer it, but would not eliminate the older or lower image alternative. Take radios, for example. By the early 1980s, AM/FM radios (whether accompanied by cassette or CD players or not) had already surpassed 50% installation across the industry. Yet all four sub-Cadillac divisions continued to offer the AM-only radio to meet a model's mythical "price point." (I doubt that anyone ever walked into a car dealer and said, "I have exactly $x,xxx to spend on a car with no options except for an automatic transmission. What do you have ?") When the GM-10s were being developed, Delco Electronics was still part of GM, and it determined that it was not cost-effective to engineer an AM-only radio. But the car divisions insisted on having that AM-only radio, so the AM radio was outsourced from a Japanese supplier. Offering Power Windows, Power Door Locks, and Power Outside Mirrors as "free-flow" options (that is, each one available by itself) generated 8 different interior door pad sets -- and multiplied by 4 interior colors resulted in 32 different interior door pad sets ... for EACH car division. And DOUBLE that, to 64, when you factor in the fact that the door pads were usually different for the higher tirm level than for the base model trim. It was possible to configure a base Chevrolet model to a higher level of "luxury" than the companion Buick upscale model. But, when trying to get the car divisions to package equipment items, they'd sooner sell their children and spouses to the gypsies ! Much of the resistence came from the high reliance on fleet sales, both daily rental and corporate fleets. Some fleets demanded power door locks for safety measures, but rejected power windows as "frivolous items." However, in markets with toll roads and bridges, power windows were deemed essential, but since company cars would be parked in company lots and garages, there was less concern for power door locks. in addition to sheet-metal variations across the car divisions -- specific fenders, hoods, and deck lids for each division, and usually doors, too -- there were additional sheet metal complexities generated by sun/moon roofs, and floor-mounted gear-shift levers. The car divisions complained that they needed the broad array of eqquipment option choices in order to "sell cars." Yet the Honda Accord became the top-selling model in the USA during that period with only 75 variations -- including colors, powertrains, and both exterior and interior color combinations. Pin-pointing the "Beginning of the End" for GM, and when the demise began is difficult. But all of these factors contributed, and the 1970s seem to be the period when GM wasn't able to see what was going within its walls, let alone in the outside world.
Fascinating! I would think the process for just one badge would be daunting enough. Even to imagine all makes to move en masse just to meet the new mandates just seems unfathomable. Thank you for your insight. 🙏😊
Adam, I was a service engineer back in the late 1980's. My biggest frustration was that I couldn't release a service bulletin to the dealer network until we had service part number(s), part(s) available in sufficient quantities with a reliability study to predict those numbers, etc. So, I had to wait.
This was exactly the timeframe I hired into the recently acquired Electronic Data Systems(EDS) straight out of the US Navy and was put to work at the BOC HQ help desk at the GM Tech Center. That building formerly GMAD HQ. It was indeed a time of much turmoil at GM which I got to see firsthand. LOTS of angry end users out there! I'll have to say I had an interesting career supporting the auto industry, GM from 1985 to 2002, outsourced from EDS to Worldcom in 2000, purchased services IT contractor at Daimler/Chrysler and FCA from 2002 to 2014 and then back at GM as an IT and Manufacturing Engineering manager from 2014 until I retired earlier in 2024. Somehow I made it 39 years without 1 layoff and only 1 outsourcing, pretty amazing in the automotive and IT industry! I suppose at the very least I should make a journal of all my experiences if not a whole book!
They were actually being kind...GM would substitute IMPORTANT parts with 50,000 times the failure rate if it saved $0.00002 per unit...just look at the ridiculous plastic lower intake gaskets with the >100% failure rate on their turn-of-the-century 60-degree V6s.
This reorganization was certainly the end of an era if nothing else. From the birth of GM until this reorganization, GMs divisions basically acted as their own separate car companies. Sure, they shared bodies and chassis, but they each had their own powertrains, styling, and features on their respective vehicles. This reorganization upped the homogination to another level where the brands shared SO many components, including styling and engines, that the divisions lost their respective identities as a result. I have no doubt this decision led to the deaths of Olds and Pontiac, which is a shame.
It saddens me that shortly after Oldsmobile recorded enormous sales leadership they were suicided 100 years after they began production. There wasn't any birthday celebration, there wasn't even a goodbye.
It should have happened earlier. You can't support that many brand with half the market share you used to have and anticipate having even less due to more market entrants. Ford was smart. With the exception of Mercury, they killed off a marque once it proved it wasn't performing. They sold off the Prestiage group before it generated losses that would take the company down. GM wasn't able to do that.
@@stevevarholy2011 I disagree. What they SHOULD have done is brought their divisions back to their roots - Chevrolet, cheap cars for the masses, including compacts and mid-sizers. Pontiac, a nicer car for not much more money, and mid-size and full-size cars only. Oldsmobile, nicer still, full-size cars only. Buick, just under Cadillac, full-size cars only. Cadillac is the only one who stayed true to it's roots and only made full-size luxury cars. Yes, the SeVille was a much smaller Nova-based car, but it wasn't cheap at all. This would have eliminated most of the inter-divisional competition and made the divisions go back to competing against OTHER auto makers products. The reason Ford lost Mercury is because the Ford and the Merc became the same car in the later 80s, except, of course, for the price.
@@weegeemike Oldsmobile was on fire in 1985 and 1986. In those years Oldsmobile had their best years of production ever. Ten years later Oldsmobile was fighting to survive. In the 1980's the Oldsmobile Cutlass was very popular. My Grandpa had a 1979 Delta 88 for a number of years, and traded it in the 1980's for a brand new Delta Holiday 88. It was not long after the trade when transmission problems started. Grandpa was pissed and took the Oldsmobile Delta Holiday down to the Buick dealer, and traded it in on a Buick Park Avenue. The Park Avenue was around long after he passed away.
Interesting video, I worked as a outside contractor for Executive Protection, covering about 6-8 of the Top GM executives Including the Presidents and Chairmen, it was during this period of Change , and I could tell when the pressure was on , they would be working long hours and and coming home at all Hours, And Robert Stemple was a very nice Man, Roger Smith Well.....
@@DinoLondis "too big to fail"...Sheer intertia kept GM going for probably 10 years beyond the point most customers should have abandoned them. I have only owned 1 GM product, a 1994 Chevrolet Caprice Wagon. I bought it used in 2002, dirt cheap. It broke constantly, but parts were cheap, readily available and most of the repairs I could do myself. In reality the Caprice served me well, but compared to my mid 90's Nissans it was a step below in quality and reliability...but "it was cheap"
@@jimbrown5091 The Tahoe kept Chevy and GM alive for a few extra years -- it was the only American-made, full-size family+boat-hauler left with RWD and a column-shift.
There are a lot of "car history" channels, but yours continues to be the best. Not only do you have hands-on experience with so many cars, from driving to maintaining, but you also have the insight to analyze much of financial and management. Car guys typically know cars, not car companies: and here you are with lots of knowledge and experience with both! For full disclosure, I wasn't around at the time, but I've always felt that GM's two greatest downfalls occured earlier: decreased quality throughout the 1970s, and perception of the brands. The first of these is pretty obvious, a combination of rush designed, poor quality control, strikes, etc... which all US automakers faced, but GM seemed to be the biggest victim of. Perhaps its because their previous cars had been really high quality vehicles by comparison? Chrysler had quality issues since 1957 (or at least the market had that perception of them), while Ford worked really hard to maintain quality during the 70s and advertised the hell out of it. The second factor, brand perception, was I think a deeply cultural change as people began to be disillusioned by "old fashioned Americana". Cadillac had been an international standard for luxury in the 1950s, but by the 1970s, it had been replaced by Mercedes Benz. Volkswagen had gotten a magnificent reputation for build tough, simple Beatles that people loved and felt enthusiasm for. GM's bread and butter, the cars that really drew people into their showrooms, had their big comfortable boats and muscle cars, but these suffered heavily from quality cuts and of course government regulation. The big boats were also seen as being for old people, and the muscle cars were seen as seriously uncool. I think GM was doomed to fail. The Japanese made great cars and had built in marketing simply because they weren't the Status-quo. Same for the Germans. Management missteps like this 1984 reorganization certainly didn't help, but I think GM simply couldn't change its entire image of so many divisions overnight: they would've had to abandon the few vehicles they made that were still excellent... case in point, look how the B-Body platform stuck around through 96, before GM decided to replace big sedans and wagons in the market with trucks and SUVs for financial and government regulation reasons. They kept their faithfuls around as long as they could, before trying to move them into something else on the dealer lot. Meanwhile the idea of conquest sales is kinda hilarious. I know people today who still refuse to drive anything made by GM (or Ford or Chrysler for that matter) simply because they're American brands. The brand perception and public's opinion of their quality never recovered after the 1970s. What's funny now is how all these once unloved GM cars of the post 1973 era are finally starting to gain some popularity. While the glory days might've been over, GM was still doing some decent work in spite of the cascading failures stacking up against them. I saw a late 70s Caprice sedan tonight, and I was stunned by how handsome that body design really is, when it can catch some street lights after a light misting of rain. So much artistry and curvature for a vehicle called the "box caprice". It was the same color as the '77 9C1 Impala you have/had in light green.
It wasn't so much that "GM decided to replace big sedans and wagons in the market with trucks and SUVs for financial and government regulation reasons," as it was the market telling GM to go that way. When unleaded fuel and the requisite catalytic converters came with the 1975 models, a portion of the public reacted by moving to pickups, vans, and SUVs, which wouldn't be hit with unleaded fuel and catalytic converter requirements until the 1979 models. All of the Big Three offered trim packages on those vehicles that were comparable to their full-size passenger cars, and the same array of optional equipment choices -- including air conditioning, multiple-speaker stereo cassette radios, and styled aluminum wheels -- were also offered in the trucks. When GM began its downsizing program with the 1977 B- and C-Bodies (the full-size cars), those new models still had most of the utility and towing capacity of the previous generation that they were replacing. However, when the A-bodies (mid-sized cars) were downsized in the following year (1978), their towing capacities were severely reduced. Those who'd been towing a boat or small-to-medium-sized travel trailer with a pre-'78 Chevelle or Cutlass wagon and needed to replace that older model found that the new models couldn't handle the load. However, a Chevy/GMC pickup or Suburban or Blazer could -- and at the same price with just as much comfort and luxury as the passenger car. The perception that the larger SUVs and other trucks were "safer" than the smaller passenger cars also led many buyers to switch from cars to trucks. (They do sit higher, enabling their occupants to see more of the road and traffic ahead.) Since fuel economy standards and safety requirements for trucks aren't as stringent for trucks as they are for cars, it's easier and more financially advantageous for all auto makers to expand their engineering and marketing efforts to trucks than to passenger cars. Prior to 1980, trucks accounted for about 35% of all new vehicle deliveries. Today, trucks account for two-thirds (about 67%) of new vehicle deliveries.
@@robertobrien9706 Good observations and I do agree. I was generalizing when, yes, there were absolutely other factors making a big impact on the situation. But that's kinda the point of my post: GM was doomed. Their car division was never going to last, and trucks have absolutely replaced what was considered a "family car" 50+ years ago.
My Dad worked for GM until he retired in 1984. I had started working for SATURN in 1985, and loved the experience. Then all of the reorganizations had ramped up to the point where no one could keep track of who was in charge and I was so glad that we were isolated from the chaos! Eventually we were all sucked into the General’s mess and scattered across the Warren (Michigan) tech center. Supplier integration was eventually disbanded, but by then I had decided to retire at age 63. It was just too stressful to be a part of any longer!
You got a lifetime free ride pension from General Motors so what exactly are you complaining about ?? New hires get a measly $15.87 an hour and NO PENSIONS
Obviously you've never been in a contract negotiation. You're offered 6%. It's the members who decide how to divy it up. Wages, health, pension. So you're trading. Nothing is free.
@@gregorylyon1004 Lifetime pension? My pension was recalculated when I was moved to GM proper, and it was frozen at just over $700 per month. I figured that it would probably buy me a few tanks of gas or something along those lines.
When I got out of the Navy in 1973, I was offered a scholarship to GM Training Center in Burbank, CA. They taught me how to work on GM cars, including how to rebuild quadrojet carburators and rebuild A/C compressors. After graduation, I went to work for an Oldsmobile dealer . A great experience .
After 1980 there were 2 GMs. There was FWD GM which was all the passenger cars from the 80s and 90s, few which people remember fondly (97 Grand Prix was the only one I like). And then there was RWD GM which was the truck and SUV lines. Those stayed true to their roots and to this day are the GM vehicles that remain popular and never went out of style. Fact- if it wasn't for the truck lineup gm woulda gone under in 1991. No question.
I can add that in 1984, I was selling Oldsmobiles. At that time, they had 3 of the top 10 cars in the US. Cutlass, Delta 88 and Ciera. Those cars turned many drivers into Honda and Toyota drivers. I can't tell you how disappointing it was to sell a new car on Saturday only to see it in the service line on Monday morning. 20 years later, they were gone.
Roger Smith was the primary cause of GM's downfall. He is considered one of the worst CEOs in history. His policies of corporate conformity were disastrous for all of the divisions.
Agreed. Roger Smith was also an absolute autocrat who didn't care if he scuttled the entire corporation and long as he could personally siphon off income for himself. Although making money by producing and selling automobiles was the long standing mantra of GM, Smith preferred to invest in other enterprises like Hughes Aircraft, etc. He paid no attention to those investigating market trends unless he could reap some benefit for himself, like Saturn. Creating Saturn was a complete insult to Chevrolet Division it was somewhat parallel to Ford's Edsel program. H. Ross Perot explained it to him publicly, which really set Smith into a tantrum. One thing for sure if you wanted to reorganize a corporation, Perot could do it. In simple language Roger Smith was the proverbial wart on the ass of progress.
@@geoffmorgan6059 I can remember getting into work arguments in 1986 or so about what a mistake I thought Saturn was. Wish I had made some bets on that one!
I bought a new 1980 Pontiac Phoenix, V-6 with 4-speed manual. Great car for our young family. Roomy, practical, yet a hoot to drive with great power and handling. But the maintenance issues (primarily brakes and electrical) killed it for me, so in 1984 I bought a new Dodge Caravan V-6, which remained with us for 10 years, 150,000 miles, was given to one of my employees who kept it for another 50,000 miles. I replaced it '84 with a '94 Caravan V-6 that we gave to our daughter in 1999 with 175,000 miles on it. She took it to over 250,000 miles.
Another huge part of GM's restructuring was the purchase of Electronic Data Systems(EDS) and making it a subsidiary of GM. At that time each division ran it's own computer systems and none of them communicated or interacted with each other well at all. Organizational infighting abounded, the GMISCA(General Motors Information Systems and Communication Activity) was charged with trying to integrate all IT systems prior to the EDS acquisition and estimated it would take 12 years to accomplish. EDS was brought in and went to work on that at warp speed under the initial direction of Ross Perot and we managed to complete that integration in just over 5 years . Ross ruffled a lot of feathers with Roger Smith and the GM board and was paid 750 million to basically go away. I lived through all of that starting in 1985 and they were some amazing times!
Always loved Perot's story about how at EDS if somebody saw a rattlesnake in the building, well, you kill the damn snake. At GM they form a comittee to study snakes. From all accounts I have read and heard since the 1980's that pretty much sums up the Roger Smith era of GM.
Brilliant! I think that this type of series could really flourish on your channel. My dad worked as a millwright for Fisher Body in Flint and was laid off in 1987. I remember that year being a lean Christmas at our house. We almost had to move to New York state before he landed a job in town at GM Truck and Bus thanks to his seniority.
My brand new 1986 El Camino had the balancer bolt shear off. Said balancer walked out, took off the crankshaft key, and started shaking like a paint mixer. Into the dealership it went. Pulled out the engine, and replacement of the crankshaft was the fix. 12K on the speedometer. Get it back, and a year or so later, the junk turbo 200R4 transmissions starts acting up. I had to disconnect the lock up solenoid. It would lock in all gears forward except 1st. Then a Chevette could pass me. The temperature selectors cable pivot broke. I either had full heat or full A/C. Took me awhile to figure that one out. Then the intake manifold gaskets started leaking oil. At 40K. All of my issues happened at low mileage. I was glad when a drunkard totaled out that truck. I was DONE.
I would definitely agree with you on that, specifically with 1972 being the last year of the true 'hardtop' and convertibles offered on the Malibu/LeMans/Cutlass/Skylark mid-size cars before the 'colonade' took over starting with the '73. Not to be a hypocrite, but the '73-'77 Monte Carlo, Grand Prix and Regal coupes pulled off looking good. I know the 1971-'76 full-size GM's weren't as popular as the '65-'70 models that preceded them, but they were the last to have the cool body styles of the 2 and 4-foor open coupes and convertibles through '75. Although the downsized GM's (starting in '77) were necessary for many familiar reasons, they lost all of the 'romantic', 'fun', 'parade-car' body styles forever, replaced with the generic 2 and 4 door sedans and a station wagon, dropping the 2-door sometime in the '80s. What happened to the full-size cars (I described) is overlooked as the beginning of the end for GM. It wasn't very long into my life this all happened, either. Born in May '57 during GM's pinnacle, I was still a teenager when the name, rank and serial # full size cars debuted in late 1976.
When it comes to GM construction quality, Adam you mentioned the body construction and interiors of the GM full size cars of 1971 as a turn for the worse. I totally agree that cars in this generation were really different (and worse) than everything before them, especially in these two areas. All you had to do was to experience how the doors closed. They were awful. In my opinion, the 1970 Camaro and Firebird were two of the best styled American cars of the entire 20th century. Unfortunately these cars with their “LCDs” (loose clunky doors) previewed the poor construction of the 1971 full size vehicles. This construction then also characterized the 1973 mid size cars. The mid 70’s GM compact cars were somewhat spared because the X-body (Nova, Omega, Ventura, Apollo - NOVA) cars benefitted from a significant facelift of the 1968 body, so the good structure remained intact. That said, at this time other cost cutting measures plagued these cars, cancelling out the goodness of this solid platform. Glued in place headliners, miserable afterthought Landau roofs (which caused roofs to rust, especially in California), and poor quality interior materials all led up to cars that were almost worthless after 7 years or 100,00 miles. I had the feeling that GM had lost all respect for their customers. Everyone knows that customer loyalty takes a long time to build, and in some cases it takes a while to degenerate. Lifelong “Chevy families” would never think to buy a Toyota back then, and these loyalists were “rewarded” with the Vega and Chevette. I think after these two debacles, in the most relevant segment of the market in the 70’s, the sub-compact market, GM gave loyalists pause to leave their brands forever. They regained many customers with the “well designed” FWD X cars at first, as their sales initially were astounding, but fell off sharply as those customers reported how painfully they had been let down by the miserable GM build and component quality. So now they destroyed their chances in both the compact and subcompact markets. Toyota and Honda were more than willing to offer customers in these segments really well made cars with lots of nice features (first generation Accord for example) bullet-proof reliability, great fuel economy and good price. With the momentum that the Japanese gained at this time, there was no way for GM to reverse the trend. The precipitous drop in market share meant that GM was getting what they deserved. This was all because they forgot to respect their customers and thought they could foist junk upon them. To me that was the core of GM’s downfall. (Also, to me the 1976 Seville was the last hurrah of the glory of how GM could build great cars. It had the solid X body platform as a basis, made only better great components, excellent materials and superior build quality. If only that car could have affected GM quality as much as GM rooflines in the 1980’s…)
My parent's, both WWII veterans, had to swallow their pride and purchase a 1976 Toyota Corolla, for a second vehicle. There was really no decent small American built car available. They stuck with their full-sized Fords, as their main cars, through the rest of their lives and bought an Escort in 1982, as their second car. The Toyota remained the only foreign car that they ever bought.
@@jeffhands7097 I remember the awful soft cloth interiors of the early 1970's. After a few years and exposure to the sun the cloth started to deteriorate. The fabric would split and tear. Most American cars at the time had them. My parents owned Volkswagens at the time and there were serious problems there with that brand too. They switched brands and went to GM. The 1980 Chevy Malibu with the 231 Buick V-6 was bullet proof, and was around in the family for 16 years. My 1986 Chevette which I bought brand new also was around for another 16 years, and never had any problems. The problem with the Chevette was lack of power. The early years of the Chevette were also plauged with problems that GM did not address during the first couple of years of production. The Chevette was discontinued in the United States in 1987 but continued to be produced in other countries until the 1990's.
@jeffhands - very well said. Not to hijack but we were a GM family for a long time. Not today. I could expound for days but only wish add while many have mentioned correctly how incompetent Roger Smith was, let us not give Rick Wagoner a pass. Just recently I saw an old interview with him. He was asked what model he currently drove. He didn’t even know!
When I was a child I assumed I would always be driving GM cars like my papa. I just knew I would have the square and oval GM keys I’m my pocket. GM broke my heart when they produced second- rate boring cars in the 1980s. My family went over to Toyota in the 1980s and never went back. It is sad really. Your videos bring back the glory days when American cars were art and reflected the glories of the nation in the 20th century.
As to the shoddy products, I bought my first new car after college from Ford. It came from the factory with a bent axle. I can tell similar stories about friends who bought GM and Chrysler products during that time. Then you have the Vega and Pinto. Shoddy products from US automakers in the 1970s is fact! I think the downfall of all the American car companies started during the 1970s. Because of poor quality, many customers went to Japanese products and never came back. This trend is somewhat still going on, though not as drastically.
@@67marlins See the Korean car brands. Read up on BMW, See the issues with most brands CVT transmissions. Read up on Fords double clutch transmissions. What you say is generally true, but clunkers are still out there. Ford and GM car quality is generally far, far better than in the 1970s.
With quality you need to differentiate between the engineering quality and the manufacturing quality. Engineers can do a crappy job and even the best manufacturing can't fix that problem. But even the best engineered product can be built poorly. Either one results in a crappy product but takes a different approach and audience to fixing.
@@gregsmith5132 True. The bent axle on the car I bought in the 1970s was a manufacturing quality issue. The poor quality of the Vega and Pinto were design quality issues.
When I was young and doing OK at my first "real" job, I bought a new 1988 Cavalier Z24. I loved that car the whole time I had it. (I traded it in a couple of years later on a used Corvette). I can't tell you how many times I took it back to the dealer, resulting in a computer reflash or EGR replacement! It was well over five times, probably around ten or more. One day within the first six months of ownership, I drove to a concert and the car overheated. I found that the plastic electric fan had been mounted in such a way that the moving part contacted the shroud and prevented it from spinning. Evidently it had been this way since day one, I had just never sat in traffic long enough for anything to happen. The bracket for the trunk lid scraped along the mounting hardware when opening and closing the trunk, leaving a streak of no paint. I fixed that myself by bending the metal out of the way. I was young and didn't know any better back then. Actually, I thought it was great that I had a new car and all this stuff was covered under warranty! I still kind of like that little car, looking back, but I now realize how atrocious the quality control was back then.
And, with the exception of the IRS, a government that only had for dominating and controlling other countries to actually function in a way to save these companies from taking a path of disaster.
I agree, CAFE regulations didn't give them the time needed to develop and fully tested everything first to avoid the problems before release. And the CAFE 'footprint' rules that basically exempted trucks and SUVs from the same rigid fuel economy standards is what ruined it altogether
As Adam's videos have regularly reminded us, GM had a portfolio of fuel efficient products in production in Europe before the 1973 oil crisis and CAFE. They had decades of experience building small cars overseas before they were forced to do so for North America. I think it is pretty obvious the CAFE exemptions for profitable pickups and SUVs were put their by lobbyists for the Detroit automakers.
Thank you Adam. I really enjoyed this and it is interesting and informative. What you share is true. I know Oldsmobile and the all the GM brands suffered under BOC and CPC groups. I was told told BOC would make the large and luxury cars and CPC would make the midsized and small cars. We see how the turned out. Then throw Saturn into this mix and GM Europe, GM Brazil, GM Mexico and GM Australia(Holden) and other branches. You can see how this would be an issue. GM has paid dearly for this reorganization. The sad part is people do not know this or realized what you are sharing. This was a good idea and video. People are so quick to say the things they do about GM without the facts. Please continue this deep look and series.
THANK YOU ! ! I entered college in 1978 and was interested in business/economics. I saw the confusion in GM and ran away, into Medicine ! Most happy to be retired now. My father indulged me, so I drove an Audi 5000 in 1979. It was wonderful, yet it angered me. GM and Ford should be better than a company like Audi. Well, as I mentioned, I ran away from the issue that still haunts me.
You were lucky to get an Audi during that time when they weren't so astronomical in price and less complicated and more reliable. I used to be a fan of the 5000 and also the 100s in the early 90s. I was going to look into getting a 90 or 100 until a friend of mine who owned a 100 talked me out of it. He said you have to make sure if you own a car like this, that you are going to have the money to fix it when it breaks.
@@HAL-dm1eh I had great hope for the original Taurus. It was designed as a complete vehicle, with all the subcomponents specifically selected for that vehicle, rather than as a "parts-bin special" as was the usual GM practice. However, by the 3rd generation, Ford had fallen back into their old ways.
I got my drivers license in 1985 and my choice was usually to drive the 74 Galaxie 500 or the 76 Honda civic. Those Japanese cars were just SO MUCH better in terms of build quality, engineering, ride and handling, more dependable more fun to drive but most importantly it got 3X the gas mileage and gas was expensive when you earn $3.35 an hour
So true. After college I went from an 85 Plymouth Reliant to an 88 Honda Prelude Si 4ws. Just sitting inside the Honda was awesome. Everything was high quality and assembly was top notch. Driving it you could feel from all the components it was designed by a collective engineering team, not an isolated team from steering, suspension, brakes, engine etc. Sadly though while the domestics did go up in quality Honda has gone down. The interior quality of my 15 Accord and 16 Odyssey are more on par with the 85 Plymouth than the 88 Prelude. The material quality they use now just isn't as good and the assembly isn't as good as it was.
@ I then drove a string of late 80’s and 90’s Pontiacs where you could see that GM was aiming to compete with Honda/Toyota and they were OK. Then I bought an 04 Pontiac Vibe brand new with Toyota engine and transmission. 310K miles and absolutely no repairs later I still have it and its just Toyotas for me now
@@jamesbosworth4191 that wasn’t my experience. Manual steering on those civics kept the driver connected to the rode. The full size American cars floated like boats dipped into curves and nose-dived when braking.
Great job on a very complex subject, Adam! I was around as a supplier to GM back then and worked with upper management in one of the divisions. The confusion in the white collar ranks was understandable as this BOC/CPC change unfolded. Career paths were upset as the line and staff management that had been in place for decades was upended. Just my two cents worth; but GM was and remained focused after the change on the internal processes and management flow as the answer to their problems in the marketplace. The reorganization only compounded the complexity of the system and made it worse. They lost sight of why the corporation existed and the needs in the marketplace - producing vehicles that people actually wanted to buy! We all see now how that worked out, unfortunately. The old adage of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship sinks applies here. It wasn't until a decade later when Bob Lutz was brought on board and was given the authority to revamp GM's product development system that some common sense and rationality was applied, needless complexity was eliminated and designers and engineers were allowed to produce vehicles that really swung for the fences again. As with any complex subject, there is no one simple answer to the question of what felled General Motors hold on their market. It died from a thousand cuts, both internal and external. A clue as to when it started might be a quote from the great Alfred Sloan, the man who created the GM organization we all know. He was GM Chairman when he gave an interview back in the 1950's. His interviewer asked a question about how GM had become the most successful corporation in the world at that time by building cars. "Young man," Sloan chided, "General Motors doesn't make cars. General Motors makes money."
You’ve hit upon one of my absolute favorite business study areas. I read and think about this topic to this day. CPC/BOC has always seemed like a very awkward split that wound up creating more redundancies than needed shared resources. I’m also not sure the big NAO reorg in the 90s was right either - it wound up continuing to neuter the divisions further into “brand management” sales/marketing niche orgs causing the death of several of the divisions due to catering each division into ever smaller sales niches. Great for differentiating detergent but not great for generating the volume needed to justify different divisions. I wonder if the best decision would have been to maintain shared engineering (Fisher) and assembly (GMAD), maintain stronger divisions (more product overlap but more volume and share), but spin off components - which would eventually be done with Delphi but too late to save itself. Surely GM knew they couldn’t stay cost competitive with captive component operations as early as the late 70s. Further savings and speed to market could be achieved by engineering fewer more versatile platforms (the Japanese already were). Lowering the DOA thresholds and leaning out the committees and processes (Ross Perot had suggested this early on). Hindsight is 20/20 and I still don’t think GM has the right structure today. But CPC/BOC was a disaster before it was even born. It’s hard to wrap logical business sense over it and still seems arbitrary. It also further complicates global ops. So much wrong with it. Thank you for this video. I hope to see many more like it!
I have read John DeLorean’s book On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors. At least how I understand it the heads of GM just kept doing business as usual even though the market had changed drastically. Failure to recognize this and the attitude of “We’re invincible” were two major factors that led what to we have today .
Just a brilliant video, Adam. I had no idea about the 1984 CPC/BOC reorganization. This was not something that even your typical die-hard GM buyer was even aware of... at least I wasn't. It wasn't common knowledge among the buying public. It's no surprise that it failed. Despite my loyalty over the years, my view of GM is sadly no longer the same. They are simply not the same company they were in the 60s, when they were producing beautiful, high performance vehicles. I think the decline began in the 1970s when the federal government began issuing mandates to the industry.
True, but some mandates are vital. For example, leaded gasoline needed to go away ASAP. I'm surprised aviation gasoline still contains low amounts of lead.
It's easy to do that when you are basically using legacy engineering and have 50% of the market. However, as Adam showed in the chart, it's much more difficult when you are trying to do it with an unweidly and costly company structure and less market share,
The real beginning of the end for GM was selling junk -- like the 1978 LeSabre with a 3.8L V6 that my parents foolishly bought ("GM knows what they're doing," said my dad). If you pressed the gas pedal more than half way down, the engine would just stall. It spent weeks at the dealer's service department to no avail. My parents were nearly in tears because they really needed that car. Forty-six years later, nobody in my family has purchased another GM product.
I worked in a GM dealership parts department from 1980 through 1995. Even today in 2024 I occasionally will have a part number zing through my noggin, and the number is for a fast moving part, like a remanufactured 440T4 transmission (8658903), or a new rack and pinion (26003943). In other words, parts that should last the life of the car were failing at a very high rate.
I’m a millennial but I’ve always perceived the turning point for GM to be around 1980 give or take. The malaise era. It’s a shame the person in charge then (Roger Smith) did such a terrible job transitioning GM to a modern global automaker. Thru the sheer brute force of its size and market share it staggered into the 21st century, when it was finally felled by the Great Recession. The internet likes to make a passion play of obsessing over every flawed product from Vega to Aztek, but an inherently healthy company could’ve survived the occasional product failure. GMs relentlessly poor decision making in the 70s/80s was the lethal wound.
Wow, great information, Adam. I was there from 1980 to 2001 at Delco Electronics. I was hourly and ended up salaried. I was so busy at the time I didn't realize what they were trying to do but hopefully I can start putting it together with your help. I loved the Auto Industry. I remember being in a meeting in 1992 and they were saying North American Operations was loosing money. I was thinking how are we staying in business. It definitely got my. attention.
I enjoy your history and business discussions just as much as actual car features. I would love to hear the same kind of history lesson regarding ford and chrysler
Thank you so much for this topic. I've been waiting for a youtuber or website to cover it forever. I think the restructuring was absolutely necessary. Remember how gm started, it was a holding company that owned a bunch of car companies. Then Alfred Sloan consolidated and restructured it into the brand ladder that became their core business. By the 80s a newer simplified corporate structure was critical. However in the 80s I think the worst decisions Roger Smith made were 2 huge ones that never get mentioned. First was to go off into defense and computer systems by buying Hughes Aircraft and EDS. This was billions in cost that was just distraction to their core business of designing and selling cars. The second was the Saturn brand. Billions and billions of capital was funneled away from the core brands to start what was basically a whole new car company. Smith's goal was to have internal competition and have Saturn as a Japanese manufacturing model inspire the rest of the company but in the end the law of gravity prevailed, and Saturn just fell into the parent GM and replaced Olds in the mid-2000s. The Saturn Car was good but it should have just replaced the J cars. There never should have been a Saturn brand. Instead, billions were funneled away from the rest of the company creating resentment between the divisions and top management, as well as Saturn itself. How can you expect Chevy and Pontiac to compete in small cars when you take all the capital away to start this side project? How can you expect Cadillac to compete with Mercedes, BMW Lexus when the capital is going to a new brand that's going to need more capital for down the road?! Those 2 decisions of the 80s really were big screwups that nobody talks about when it comes to GMs downfall. In addition, there is more to it and that's simply GM Hubris from being #1 for so long. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was always rooting for GM but then disappointed with the product. Every single car felt like it had been designed by someone totally out of touch by what was in style at the time. Take my dad's A body century wagon. The interior felt like it was designed in the 70s with the horizontal speedometer and tiny buttons, chrome trim everywhere, etc. THis is when ford chrysler japanese makes all had big round analog gages, big knob controls for hvac, very well thought out ergonomics. The cars, (especially the interiors) just screamed GM Hubris, "WEVE BEEN #1 SINCE 1928! DON'T TELL US HOW TO DESIGN CARS! WE TELL YOU WHATS IN STYLE!" Every single GM car I'd sit in and think, what were they thinking? Like the W body Grand Prix had this tiny little panel the size of a credit card with tiny buttons and a tiny slider for hvac. It was just not practical. To me that's got nothing to do with corporate restructuring it's just product designers totally out of touch with what the public wanted cuz they had been so successful for so long. The fact that Ford and Chrysler were able to turn things around with product and GM stuck with their antiquated UGLY 70s sheer look styling says it all.
In classic fashion for me, i was just bitter at GM for dropping the RWD platform A's. But, I failed to recognize the overall situation from a 40,000' perspective. Quite possibly one of the best videos you've done!!
General Motors could not continue to meet corporate average fuel economy standards with rear wheel drive platform vehicles. They had absolutely no choice but to switch to front drive cars
I love your videos. I'm a late gen X'er, and didn't have a lot of experience with GM growing up, other than my mom's Olds Alero or later a 2003 Chevy Malibu, but even those cars had problems, usually something like the window regulators, water pumps, fuel pumps, and not with a lot of miles when they were traded in. The engines were fine. As a consumer, I rather not have my car in the shop. Moons ago, I really wanted a 2012 Chevy Cruze, however, a terrible experience at the local Chevy dealership pushed me towards a 2012 Honda Civic and long and short, I still have that Civic and the Cruze wound up being a terrible car model, with reports of pump issues and failing turbos. And as a former Michigander, it was hard to not buy something Big 3. But I was also having a crisis of faith in reliability and resale value and reputation means a lot. When I think of malaise era cars, I think of the Chevy Vega. What a pretty, yet ultimately doomed car. The intent was great, but the execution was terrible. If GM would've nailed those series of cars, I think they would've been fine, but they began nailing their own coffin instead.
Product redundancy and poor quality control at the factory did them in back in the 70s. It's ironic because many well designed cars and car parts like the Oldsmobile gas V8 were often some of the best ever made.
For me the 'beginning of the end' for GM was when they put Chevy engines into Oldsmobiles and thought nobody would notice. As someone else said, they did not respect their customers.
Other car makers have also done the same. Look at KIA and Hyundai. Some of their cars share the same drive trains. Also Toyota and Subaru have a a sports car that is the same with rebranding going on. They copied GM. Many of GM's cars share the same parts so the part you buy to replace the one that fails is the same. GM did that to save money on parts. When you buy in larger quantity the cost is cheaper. I always found the cost of many auto parts was cheaper when the same part was used amongst the car makers many brands. These people were bean counters trying to increase profit to benefit the stockholders. The stockholders want their dividends paid on their investment.
@@ericknoblauch9195 I agree with you about other automakers, but GM built their whole business model on differentiation between the brands. Albert Sloan started this in GM as you were supposed to buy entry-level with a Chevy, then as you move up the ladder in your career, you bought Pontiac, then Olds, then Buick, and finally Cadillac when you have "arrived", but you stayed in the GM family. If you have "made it" enough to have graduated up the ladder to an Olds, you did not want to open the hood and see a low-brow Chevy motor in there for crying out loud. Customers were pissed and sued GM over it. GM with this one move undercut their entire business model. They in effect told their customers it was all marketing BS and one brand is the same as another.
@johnstrauss8061 GM also put the 350 V-8 Chevy engine in Cadillac's. Cadillac was the top end luxury brand. The 350 is known for it's durability, reliability, and longevity. But in a luxury car. Cadillac buyers should have requested their own power for the brand. GM tried to change that when the Northstar V-8 came. The Northstar also had it's problems with the head bolts. The problem with the Northstar was not rectified until 2006.
@@ericknoblauch9195 BUT, you destroy your product when all you try to do is please the stockholders. Then the stock becomes near worthless. Shortsightedness personified.
So sad to remember that GM was not just the largest auto company in the world, it was the largest CORPORATION in the world... Maybe they should have held on to Frigidaire? 😢
@@stevevarholy2011 And ironically, THAT is who owns Frigidaire now! 😊 Sadly, Whirlpool bought up all the other American brands - Amana, Jenn-Air, Maytag, KitchenAid - and turn them all into Whirlpool crap. Thus, I have a poorly designed, overpriced range 'made' by KitchenAid, and a dishwasher made by Amana that is far inferior to the Hobart-made KitchenAid dishwashers. The only thing I have that makes sense and still works better than any other microwave I have owned (despite being Whirlpool now) is the Amana RadarRange...
You do a great job (as always) of laying out cause vs. interim effect vs. later effect. As a kid of a family that bought both Ford and GM cars in the 70s and 80s, the downsizing missteps combined with the relentless de-contenting (plastic fantastic but also general cheapness) really made my family and others look elsewhere. Dad went from a '78 Grand Marquis 2-door to an early 80s Bonneville Model G wagon and the difference was stark. At the same time the "foreign" makes offered higher tech (looking at least), better HP per MPG, and value (options / dollar) seemingly overnight. I can't believe (as you point out several times) that this was a shock / surprise. I'd love to understand more about the mindsets in this period.
When they needed to develop a product as refined as the little Honda Accord, they were stuck trying to meet CAFE, I never thought of ALL the components that had to be reinvented, right down to the door handles. All our 60-76 Caddies had the SAME door handles! With Frigidaire and EMD and later GMAC mixed in, there's more than a whiff of what happened to Penn Central RR in this story. It's a miracle there IS a GM in 2024.
Adam -- Another excellent video, with a lot of great commentary. Your efforts to interview retired auto executives and stylists in the great state of Michigan are always interesting and have clearly led to a very educated following of your channel. I have always felt that Detroit's refusal to embrace emissions standards in the late 1960's was a huge part of the American auto industry decline. If the Big 3 had put engineering towards their own fully-developed in-house fuel injection systems, instead of feedback carburetors and throttle-body fuel injection, even on their regular old push-rod motors, they would not have lost the millions of buyers that they did from say, 1978 to 1998. (And AMC could have bought the one of them for their engine line!) Instead, you have my 1985 Lincoln Continental, with throttle-body fuel injection, that is powerless in a way modern drivers cannot comprehend! The Big 3 all were engineering powerhouses at one time in the 1960's, but really squandered that over time. -Bobo KC
It's hard to point to one single event when GM jumped the shark. It's usually an accumulation of small things that go unchecked or uncorrected that in time really add up. I think for Cadillac it was when they came out with the 4100 and the 8-6-4 engines. Both of those were just terrible failures that really tarnished Cadillac's name and image. I don't think Cadillac has ever recovered from those.
It didn't, but their decline started with the 71s. Cadillac was no longer in charge of their assembly. A new "Assembly Division" had taken over that function, and it showed.
Adam, this is superb 👏 May I suggest seeds for the fertile soil of your imagination 🙏 1) Imagine a parallel timeline where this same decision was successful, 2) Which company has done this successfully? VW, with its myriad brands? 3) compare and contrast GM, Ford (with its PAG group), Stellantis, BMC, Rootes Group...., and, 4) the care and feeding of automotive subsidiaries, ie:- Holden, Vauxhall, Opel, Saab, Volvo, et al. 🖖🙏
Australia yes, but most Americans don't like European cars. Too unreliable, even compared to 80s American cars. They are fine as long as you don't try to drive them!
Awesome. This is the kind of video a lot of us like. It brings out some great comments from people who were there too. Are you going to talk about the UAW and GM some day?
A great perspective on the downfall of what was once considered an industrial giant that was "too big to fail". GM also was quintessential Americana, as I remember taglines from the early to mid 1970s such as "See the USA in Your Chevrolet". Sadly, today, GM's North American offerings seem to be limited to large pick-up trucks and SUV's. As I understand the current business model, GM is much more of a car manufacturer in China than it is at home.
1979 is when I first had problems with GM. I purchased a '79 Monza Spyder that had multiple problems, two different color mirrors and Spyder decals also paint peeling off the bumper. The last two Chevrolets that I had were a 2008 Colorado and a 2010 Malibu. Both were poorly made and cured me of my GM addiction. The best GM car I ever owned was a '77 Camaro.
I just shared a similar comment with Adam, people gave the domestics multiple opportunities and eventually gave up. Once in a while we have to remind ourselves that the youngest person who ever watches these videos is the guy who produces them. 😉Adam was not even born when GM began to self-destruct.
Uhm, you might have been a little to young to afford one when they came out, but you should read up on the Vega. Just wow, they were bad. Interestingly enough, the Vega was a (the first?) "corporate" project. Chevy was ordered to sell them but had almost no part in the design and component decisions.
My girlfriend at the time bought a 1974 Vega GT it didn't seem bad, but she got rid of a 68 Camaro RS convertible. Duh! We didn't know that they would be worth so much now. My first new car was a '74 Nova SS .😂. Also I was unaware that the Monza was just an updated Vega.@@The-yp7lr
@@rightlanehog3151I’m in college and I watch these videos. It’s interesting to learn of a bygone America and the gorgeous cars of the the mid 50s - 71ish
Adam, this was an excellent synopsis of the GM situation. I saw similar scenarios in the downsizing of the aerospace industry post cold war. I was part of the GM / Hughes organization at that time. At the end of the day, I believe you identified the root cause of any bureaucratic organization regardless of industry. Leaders must drive hard for agility and lean operations. Often, corporate staff while well intended, only add burden to the very thing they are trying to minimize.....
At 15:33, one big reason is budgets. Every year, companies and divisions/subsidiaries within those companies need to create a budget for how to spend the money allotted/available to them. So, if you spend money developing and making a product, that is an expense that needs to be offset by the sale of that product. If you give that product to a sister-company/division, you need them to pay money from their budget to cover the costs you incurred, and even make some money, because you're trying to make a profit to justify your existence to the parent company and their shareholders.
I still contend that the reorganization should have kept all the car brands, but streamlined the product offerings so that there was no overlap. Drop Saturn, sell Saab keep Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet as distinct models with fundamental platform sharing. Chevrolet focused on smaller /cheaper cars. Pontiac with sportier, models, Buick and Olds larger mid-luxury with Cadillac as a pure upmarket brand. No more cookie-cutter cars. Two dealer channels (GM stores and Cadillac stores)...no direct competition between brands. All light trucks under Chevy, all commercial trucks under GMC. I'm no CEO or marketing genius, but I am a lover of cars and history and this plan would have saved the legacy brands.
I 100% agree with this other than GMC only making commercial trucks. GM banks off of the Denali trim models. Though, now that line is not as significant with High Country models. It is an absolute shame what GM has become.
I mostly agree, but no, chassis sharing, GM and Ford used chassis, not platforms, was bad, as it meant the same car for all divisions, except, of course, for the price. Before 1977, full-size GM cars each had their own chassis as far as wheelbase was concerned. But I would have indeed taken compacts away from Pontiac/Olds/Buick, and mid-sizers away from Olds and Buick as well. Each division would have gone back to their own market niche, just like it used to be.
I think the biggest downfall for gm was just their build quality honestly. Car companies now and car design as a whole shows that people are willing to buy cookie cutter cars regardless of brand (think even within the gm stable with their small suvs that look similar and have the same exact engines). My dad was a mechanic during the 80s and 90s at gm dealers of various makes, and one thing that always comes up in conversation is build quality. Sending out cars for pdis with stuff that wasn't even installed from the factory, but that had the hardware in the center console for something like a different center console. Having poor engines that weren't very reliable overall, making engines like the Northstar that could have been amazing, but got a bad rep and then they took too long to fix that reputation. Same with their transmissions, where it took them way too long to ever correct the issues (like the 4t60 through the 90s and into the 2000s, or the transition from the 700r4 to the 4l60. Optispark in the 92-96 c4 giving it a bad rep and slightly being overblown, or the allante having an anemic engine for the first couple of years
@@gregorylyon1004 NO IT WASN'T!!! If pensions are so horrible, how do Japanese and European companies do it and made money? How did WE before the early 2,000s do it? Quit being a corporate shill!
The beginning of the end of GM for me was when I saw that Time magazine cover (I believe it was Time) with the 4 GM intermediates Celibrity,cutlas,century and 6000. The cookie cutter cars were an insult to me and other’s intelligence.
GM's decline started in the early 1970's right in line when the government started interfering with Cafe ratings, emissions and the mandatory 5 MPH bumpers. The Vega and Astra were a big start to their malaise with aluminum engines without steel cylinder liners, undersized cheap radiators, poor rustproofing and many other cost cuts. Add in undersized 200 Metric transmissions, improperly made camshafts in the 305 Small Block engines, the disastrous 5.7 diesel followed by the even worse 260 diesel and numerous quality control issues with paint, body hardware and cheap materials that were substituted for steel and that pretty much made up the 70's. The 1980's started off with the most recalled car line in history the "X" cars, the Cadillac 8-6-4 fiasco followed by the rushed into production HT 4100 V8, the first year J- car misfire with the 1.8 carbureted OHV 4 cylinder engine, the Cimarron, the overly downsized B, C and E body car lines, the 440 trans-axle issues, the W-body program that they grossly overpaid to launch and was launched years later than originally intended to the 1990's GM garbage interiors, intake gasket issues on both the 60 degree V6 engines and the 3800 series II motors, the Northstar head gasket issues killing off the B-body full sizers and then the F-body cars in the early 2000's. And the mistakes continue to this day as if they have really not learned anything from the bankruptcy. We still have poor quality control, 5.3/6.2 V8 engines with DFM that eat lifters, various 8/10 speed automatic transmission issues, plenty of recalls, poor product deployments that are half baked, way too much focus on a technology that isn't anywhere near ready for primetime in their massive EV push and discontinuation of many of their popular nameplates with sedans and sport coupes like the Camaro. I am actually surprised they do as well as they do considering all the missteps they keep making but mainly attribute that to massive profit makers like the trucks and full sized SUV's. If you took those out of the equation this company would be in serious trouble!
CAFE started in 1976. It was signed into law by Gerald R. Ford, the republican who pardoned Tricky Dick. GM's decline started with the 71 models. No CAFE or 5 MPH bumpers yet, and minimal emissions crap, but the cars were a big disappointment. The Chevys were OK, I guess, but the Pontiacs had a plain looking interior that was well below what previous models had, and the Buicks and even the Cadillacs were often poorly assembled compared to earlier models, lacking the assembly quality you would expect with such expensive cars. The 73s were a little better, but by then you had 5 MPH bumpers, much stiffer emissions limits, which resulted in EGR, which severely hurts part-throttle performance, milder camshafts, etc. But the worse things were the declining assembly quality. You didn't expect that on a Cadillac or even a Buick.
@@manoman0 Actually I did too. Made the cars look more substantial and more rugged, but Poncoman49 and the pundits didn't. The 73 cars sold fantastically though, so many folks must have liked them.
@@gregorylyon1004 Workers are SUPPOSED to get a pension for the rest of their lives! Employer-controlled pension funds are INVESTED. What the workers are paid is the RETURN on those investments, so they often cost the employer NOTHING. Union-controlled pension funds are ALSO invested. What the members get is the RETURN on those investments. That's how it works and always has until the Supreme(ly Awful) Court ruled that employer-controlled pension monies are the employer's money to do whatever he sees fit, and if that means no money is left, (because he put it into his profits, whereas before, it could only be used for pensions and related purposes), letting him fraudulently claim that the pension fund is "broke" and is "too expensive" and is "obsolete", etc. Quit being a corporate shill.
It's amazing that with all the effort in the mid-80s to improve efficiency and become more competitive, that GM still managed to drop the ball with regards to the competition, specifically from Japan. The timing of this video is interesting in that GM has just announced a major pullback on their robotaxi program. I can't help but think they are making another major strategic mistake.
Excellent commentary, Adam, and I think your line of thinking is very accurate. I'll chuck in a few thoughts as well. To me, one of the reasons for GM's precipitous drop in sales, and in customer satisfaction, was, what I call, "GM Too Good Disease." "We can't make the engine like that, it would be too good." GM was seemingly focused on second or third best when it came to engines, drivetrains, and, most importantly, "feel." The cars felt "light," "plastic-y," and cheap compared to the Japanese counterparts. Spindly little pedals, plastic door handles that crumbled in your hands, creaky instrument panels, paper thin door glass, doors that felt as substantial as a Dorito chip, etc. Add in the engine swapping, lack of choice in body style, horrid engine performance (the full sizers were AWFUL to drive - bog slow), plus the related disasters in brake fires, HT4100 engine failures, THM-200 transmissions, Vega rear axles in V8 Firebirds, etc etc etc. The cars no longer had that solid, heavy, quality feel. The engines were anemic, transmissions even worse. WAY too much front wheel drive, where it should've only been in the small cars. A near psychotic obsession with CAFE regs when most foreign car builders, particularly German and Euro, luxury cars, wore the "Gas Guzzler" tag like a badge of honor. Cadillac was cheapening its customers out, and even worse, keeping the 1980 body style into 1992 was just unforgiveable. Someone once told me that Cadillac (or Lincoln for that matter) could never build a car as good as a M-B S Class. I disagree, vehemently. Cadillac could absolutely build a BETTER car. But GM won't let them, nd even if they did, Cadillac has forgotten how to build a modern day car that is as supremely superior, as they once did. EPA regulations be damned. Build the EPA fines into the sticker price the way the Euro builders do and make the best damn cars they can. But they won't. Not any more. 40 MPG cars? Sure, build one or two. No one buys them except when the gas lines come. They dump them just as fast. 50 years later, we're still reacting to the 1974 Arab Oil embargo and energy crises, that has long passed, and will not happen again.
(with tongue in cheek) Ah! But the drop of market share for GM had a positive note: They didn't have to worry about the Federal Trade Commission making any inquiries about dominating the market . . . as years before there had been urban rumors about General Motors getting the Feds attention on such matters.
GM also went overboard in the 1980s with expanding their brands' lineups and introducing Geo and Saturn, which ended up costing GM a lot in a short period. The rebadging GM had been doing since the 70s had also begun to play a toll on finances. Seeing you did this video and a video on the history of the Pontiac brand, you should do a video on the history of Oldsmobile. I can also picture you publishing books on automotive history and selling them on Amazon Kindle.
I also remember the older clientele at the time were upset that they weren't getting a Pontiac engine in their Pontiac and so on... Wasn't there a class action suit against GM on this subject I bring up.
The people behind this channel are probably aware of it but Ingrassia and White's book, _Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry,_ covers the BOC-CPC reorganization in quite a bit of detail. After reading it, and watching this video, I think GM suffered from an inertia problem. By the time it was obvious that they needed to make a change, it was so late that they had to make all the changes at once, on an impossibly short deadline. It was not a recipe for success.
DeLorean was saying that long before the reorg. He devoted a good part of On a Clear Day to the problems the legacy structure of the company had on product development.
The collective weight of bloated cost structures and bureaucratic processes, high unionized labor costs, and souring union relations both delayed change and made changes extremely difficult. Making the best and most desirable products possible took a backseat to making the most possible products at highest margins possible, which combined with the sudden need for small efficient cars which was out of the big 3’s wheelhouse, doomed them in the 70’s.
Spot on. That hideous second downsizing, the diesel engines and fwd did them in. All that and younger people not caring about style and buying mine vans and ugly subcompacts.
This was interesting. I learned what the “CPC” in “CPC Flint” is. The TPI 305 that came in my Z28 has a GM Motorsport decal on the intake plenum that has CPC flint logo on it. knew the motor was made in Flint didn’t know what the CPC was.
Thanks Adam, I had no idea about this reorganization. GM was obviously too big to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. But, trimming the company down meant losing so much good talent, as you mentioned about many of the Fisher body employees. While I understand that GM had no choice but to release some of these mistakes before their time due to CAFE, it just amazes me that with all GM's clout, they could not have delayed some of that regulation giving them a chance to really be ready. It's like you say, some of those cars really were great ideas and did many things well. But, the cost cutting, and knowingly releasing flawed vehicles only sealed GMs fate, one customer at a time. Foreign competition was just waiting with open arms for alienated GM owners to switch brands. All in all, GM initial quality has certainly improved greatly since the sloppy days of the 70s. To me the difference was that although the big cars of the 70s may have been poorly assembled, their long term reliability was excellent. Please don't get me wrong, am not blaming (totally) factory workers for shoddy workmanship, Oftentimes, their best efforts might have been thwarted by line speed requirements and poorly designed/quality controlled pieces that would never fit together properly. No matter how much effort and care was applied on the line. Again, while I totally understand that GM was at a big disadvantage back when these regulations hit, upper management had not right to continue to kill the company with super high salaries and benefits. I saw the same quick decline occur at OMC, we released outboards in the late 90s that were not ready for the market in an effort to comply with newly imposed EPA requirements. Customers and dealers saddled with those engines are gone forever, same with OMC, breaks my heart.
I'm 65, and have been a Chevy man all my life. Your argument here lines up exactly to my memories of the GM timeline post 1980. I remember the quality issues in the late 70s, followed by the struggle to adapt to the new market realities in the 80s and 90s. I've been a truck guy for the last 25 years, and since 2004 the trucks are pretty darn bullet proof especially at the 2500 level. To me, everyone's cars are mostly boring anymore.
You hadn't had all the fuel and brake lines rot out. Engines drop valves with less than 20,000 miles. Frames that rot out in less than 10 years. Must not be the salt belt. Truck generations after 1998 suck because the steel sucks. GM even made replacement Teflon coated brake and fuel lines. US trucks now are over priced pieces of sh**.
@@northwoodsguy1538no, not in the rust belt. My 98 1500 was a pos. My 2004 1500 is an outstanding truck, and my 17 duramax is like a hardworking Cadillac. I've heard the stories about rust, but I think that effects all vehicles in the rust belt. Agree that the pricing is a little out of line.
After 1980 there were 2 GMs. There was FWD Gm which was all the passenger cars that everyone hates today and there was RWD GM which was teh truck line. Those stayed true to their roots and to this day the full size gm trucks and SUVs are the only GM cars I find appealing.
@@Rick-S-6063lately the cost of steel has a lot to do with it. I sell in a niche steel market, and over the past 20 years steel has incrementally gone through the roof. Products I sell today have more steel in them due to engineering code changes, and cost of raw material is more that twice what it was 20 years ago. Plus, you can run the cost of any new vehicle (or any product for that matter) through a dollar inflation calculator, and you'll see that pricing is not that far out of line, especially when you consider all the bells and whistles included in a modern vehicle, verses 50 years ago.
Very informative, Adam...The Asian Manufacturers impact on the American New Car Market definitely had a fair bit to do with the need for GM to restructure/reorganize...Yep, the beginning of the end for GM and their domination, Adam....Cheers fm Damo.
I remember as a kid in the 90s, being in my father's Chevettes, and wishing for the day he could buy an actual car. I knew they were garbage even at 5 year old. Yes, he owned up to five at one point. Only one was ever "working". Bought a Japanese car at 18 and have never considered a GM.
16:30 Wonder if the spelling of employees as “EMPLOYES”’on the plate pictured was a deliberate internal GM New English spelling to save cost on the expense of extra letters.
a cadillac from the late 1950s to 1981 sounds the same when cranking. so much cadillac interior hardware was more or less common from the 1950s through the end of the brougham in 1992. these are endearing features to me, but I can understand them being emblematic of the difficulty encountered by GM when trying to retool everything in a short span
I was from a G family, more specifically, Buick. First new car was a 1979 Buick Regal Limited turbo. I loved it more than any car I’ve ever owned but it gave e so much trouble. The rear end kept grinding and falling. I think I had it to the dealer 4 times. The end came when the turbo failed, burning oil so much I had to keep a case of oil in the trunk. Broke my heart.
You are so knowledgeable of these subjects, have you written or considered writing a book about this? In particular, I'm intrigued with your knowledge of design. I think that GM started going downhill in 1978 with the introduction of the shared platform designs. To me, the styling of their cars were too similar across the divisions. If you consider the 1978-87 Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, Regal, and Cutlass designs, there was little to distinguish across those platforms. As a child of the 60s, it was much easier to distinguish a Chevy from a Pontiac in terms of aesthetics. Also, how many cars do you own? I love watching your videos.
Guess ive had great luck. 87 Celebrity Eurosport, 91 Lumina Z34, 92 Trans Am (still own), 03 Bonneville SSEI, and a Caddy XTS VSport (current own). All have been and are terrific cars. Reliable, fun to drive, and interesting. However, i do meticulously maintain my vehicles, dont abuse them, and keep them clean.
My thoughts are pretty simple on this topic in general…companies that start out and grow by excelling at producing a good product create their own decline/downfall when they stop thinking about making a good/better product and instead think about making more profits.
Why not let the divisions operate more semi independently? That’s what allowed GM to thrive in its earlier days. The divisions could be nimble and adaptable. They had independent engineering and design and sometimes manufacturing too. But the GM umbrella allowed these semi independent groups to share technical developments when it was advantageous. Internal consolidation and elimination of redundancy probably seemed like a good idea to the bean counters when they took control. But it ended up killing the organizational organism from the inside. They tried to make a healthy subject healthier and ended up turning it into a sick patient. And every time they thought they hadn’t done enough they kept doubling down and making the patient sicker. All the while the “cure” was actually toxic to the organization. The question is whether these were innocent mistakes or whether the U.S. auto industry tanked on purpose so that ultimately they could have off shore work forces laboring under authoritarian regimes??? Sounds nuts I know but one wonders… Wall Street will stop at nothing to hollow out America and destroy it from within. And that’s where the real corporate control rests. Not in the top management of each company in the real economy. They all have to dance to Wall Street’s tune while the whole country goes downhill in a heap of imaginary “productivity” and debt that is all too real. Oh well … there’s my rant for the day. 😅
You are absolutely spot on! Shame that so few people understand. Notice how nobody mentions the fact that the Japanese were heavily subsidized their government? Notice how nobody mentions the fact that in the mid 70s, the Japanese passed a series of regulations directly aimed at our cars without mentioning them by name, effectively freezing them out of their market, while our government did absolutely nothing in response?
I worked at GM from 1978-81, and 1983-91, and from 1985-89 was with the GM-10 (W-Car) platform -- the mid-size cars of Chevrolet Lumina, Pontiac Grand Prix, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Buick Regal. And in 1990-91 I was a member of a Product Simplification / Complexity Reduction task force. You've hit most of the salient points about GM's decline, but there are so many more that contributed to it.
Many parties, both inside and outside of GM, felt that one of GM's strengths was the 5 passenger car divisions. That was probably the case into the 1970s, but the growing popularity of both the Japanese and European imports with more focused and firmly defined vehicles ate away at GM's practice of offering "all things to all people in all products all the time" with nearly all of its products. All of the car divisions except for Cadillac (and later Saturn) had: full-sized cars (B-Bodies); mid-sized cars (A-Bodies); mid-sized specialty cars (A-Specials -- Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix, Olds Cutlass Supreme, and Buick Regal); compact cars (X-Bodies); sub-compacts (J-Cars); plus others that were specific to just one or two divisions, plus the C- and E-Bodies for Olds, Buick, and Cadillac. And all of those A, B, J, and X cars had the full array of body styles (2-door, 4-door, etc.) at each car division. And they all had base trim level models, higher-level trim models, and "sporty" models. And they were all competing with each other, as well as with Ford, Toyota, and all other manufacturers. It was just as great a sin for the Chevrolet Division General Manager to lose a sale to Pontiac as it was to lose a customer to Ford.
The absurdity of this over-duplication was pointed out in the late 1980s by GM Canada which only had two sales channels: Chevrolet/Oldsmobile/Cadillac, and Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Cadillac. GM Canada raised the issue of having nearly identical Chevrolets and Oldsmobile models in the one channel's showrooms, and the same situation with Pontiac and Buicks in the other channel's stores.
The "all things to all people in all products all the time" mindset wasn't mitigated by any kind of product czar, or even a designated office or committee, that could say to any of the divisions, "Thou shalt do this .... and thou shalt not do this other thing." For example, if Chevrolet is the designated "low-price" division for a given platform, and Buick is the designated "premium price" division, nobody had the authority to say, "Chevy, you do NOT need a leather interior," and "Buick, you do NOT need to have hand-crank windows and an AM-only radio," among other things.
Another problem that GM management failed to recognize, let alone manage, was the proliferation of equipment choices (options) and the head-spinning confusion that generated among buyers as well as the dealer network. When something new or an improved iteration of an existing item came along, they were only too eager to offer it, but would not eliminate the older or lower image alternative. Take radios, for example. By the early 1980s, AM/FM radios (whether accompanied by cassette or CD players or not) had already surpassed 50% installation across the industry. Yet all four sub-Cadillac divisions continued to offer the AM-only radio to meet a model's mythical "price point." (I doubt that anyone ever walked into a car dealer and said, "I have exactly $x,xxx to spend on a car with no options except for an automatic transmission. What do you have ?") When the GM-10s were being developed, Delco Electronics was still part of GM, and it determined that it was not cost-effective to engineer an AM-only radio. But the car divisions insisted on having that AM-only radio, so the AM radio was outsourced from a Japanese supplier.
Offering Power Windows, Power Door Locks, and Power Outside Mirrors as "free-flow" options (that is, each one available by itself) generated 8 different interior door pad sets -- and multiplied by 4 interior colors resulted in 32 different interior door pad sets ... for EACH car division. And DOUBLE that, to 64, when you factor in the fact that the door pads were usually different for the higher tirm level than for the base model trim. It was possible to configure a base Chevrolet model to a higher level of "luxury" than the companion Buick upscale model.
But, when trying to get the car divisions to package equipment items, they'd sooner sell their children and spouses to the gypsies ! Much of the resistence came from the high reliance on fleet sales, both daily rental and corporate fleets. Some fleets demanded power door locks for safety measures, but rejected power windows as "frivolous items." However, in markets with toll roads and bridges, power windows were deemed essential, but since company cars would be parked in company lots and garages, there was less concern for power door locks.
in addition to sheet-metal variations across the car divisions -- specific fenders, hoods, and deck lids for each division, and usually doors, too -- there were additional sheet metal complexities generated by sun/moon roofs, and floor-mounted gear-shift levers.
The car divisions complained that they needed the broad array of eqquipment option choices in order to "sell cars." Yet the Honda Accord became the top-selling model in the USA during that period with only 75 variations -- including colors, powertrains, and both exterior and interior color combinations.
Pin-pointing the "Beginning of the End" for GM, and when the demise began is difficult. But all of these factors contributed, and the 1970s seem to be the period when GM wasn't able to see what was going within its walls, let alone in the outside world.
Fascinating! I would think the process for just one badge would be daunting enough. Even to imagine all makes to move en masse just to meet the new mandates just seems unfathomable. Thank you for your insight. 🙏😊
Interesting read!
After reading this, the problem is obvious. Not once did you mention quality.
Outstanding , you wrote a thesis! Adam should invite you as a guest
Enlightening and fascinating.
And I own several of these mentioned.
The joke within General Motors was B-O-C stood for Big Old Cars, and C-P-C stood for Cheap Plastic Cars. I thought that it was a bad idea.
It's big overpriced cars.
I liked the BO, not so much the C
Adam, I was a service engineer back in the late 1980's. My biggest frustration was that I couldn't release a service bulletin to the dealer network until we had service part number(s), part(s) available in sufficient quantities with a reliability study to predict those numbers, etc. So, I had to wait.
This was exactly the timeframe I hired into the recently acquired Electronic Data Systems(EDS) straight out of the US Navy and was put to work at the BOC HQ help desk at the GM Tech Center. That building formerly GMAD HQ. It was indeed a time of much turmoil at GM which I got to see firsthand. LOTS of angry end users out there! I'll have to say I had an interesting career supporting the auto industry, GM from 1985 to 2002, outsourced from EDS to Worldcom in 2000, purchased services IT contractor at Daimler/Chrysler and FCA from 2002 to 2014 and then back at GM as an IT and Manufacturing Engineering manager from 2014 until I retired earlier in 2024. Somehow I made it 39 years without 1 layoff and only 1 outsourcing, pretty amazing in the automotive and IT industry! I suppose at the very least I should make a journal of all my experiences if not a whole book!
Indeed! That would be a very interesting book!
Hell yea, that would be an amazing read for anyone interested in hearing from a long time industry insider !
A major car magazine in the late 1980's: "General Motors would make cars out of cardboard if they thought it would save them 2 cents per unit..."
They were actually being kind...GM would substitute IMPORTANT parts with 50,000 times the failure rate if it saved $0.00002 per unit...just look at the ridiculous plastic lower intake gaskets with the >100% failure rate on their turn-of-the-century 60-degree V6s.
That’s EXACTLY how I view GM.
Every car manufacturer is a pea counter. Not just GM
@@sonnylatchstring True, but GM takes it to the extreme...they'd sell cars without brakes to save a nickel if they were able to.
@ GM just makes it more obvious
Fascinating discussion. It’s like we’re attending a history of General Motors college course. Well done! Locking forward to future lectures.
This reorganization was certainly the end of an era if nothing else. From the birth of GM until this reorganization, GMs divisions basically acted as their own separate car companies. Sure, they shared bodies and chassis, but they each had their own powertrains, styling, and features on their respective vehicles. This reorganization upped the homogination to another level where the brands shared SO many components, including styling and engines, that the divisions lost their respective identities as a result. I have no doubt this decision led to the deaths of Olds and Pontiac, which is a shame.
And during this same period, the one car brand that was unique within GM, Saturn, was slowly pushed back into being the same as the other divisions.
It saddens me that shortly after Oldsmobile recorded enormous sales leadership they were suicided 100 years after they began production. There wasn't any birthday celebration, there wasn't even a goodbye.
It should have happened earlier. You can't support that many brand with half the market share you used to have and anticipate having even less due to more market entrants. Ford was smart. With the exception of Mercury, they killed off a marque once it proved it wasn't performing. They sold off the Prestiage group before it generated losses that would take the company down. GM wasn't able to do that.
@@stevevarholy2011 I disagree. What they SHOULD have done is brought their divisions back to their roots - Chevrolet, cheap cars for the masses, including compacts and mid-sizers. Pontiac, a nicer car for not much more money, and mid-size and full-size cars only. Oldsmobile, nicer still, full-size cars only. Buick, just under Cadillac, full-size cars only. Cadillac is the only one who stayed true to it's roots and only made full-size luxury cars. Yes, the SeVille was a much smaller Nova-based car, but it wasn't cheap at all. This would have eliminated most of the inter-divisional competition and made the divisions go back to competing against OTHER auto makers products. The reason Ford lost Mercury is because the Ford and the Merc became the same car in the later 80s, except, of course, for the price.
@@weegeemike Oldsmobile was on fire in 1985 and 1986. In those years Oldsmobile had their best years of production ever. Ten years later Oldsmobile was fighting to survive. In the 1980's the Oldsmobile Cutlass was very popular. My Grandpa had a 1979 Delta 88 for a number of years, and traded it in the 1980's for a brand new Delta Holiday 88. It was not long after the trade when transmission problems started. Grandpa was pissed and took the Oldsmobile Delta Holiday down to the Buick dealer, and traded it in on a Buick Park Avenue. The Park Avenue was around long after he passed away.
Interesting video, I worked as a outside contractor for Executive Protection, covering about 6-8 of the Top GM executives Including the Presidents and Chairmen, it was during this period of Change , and I could tell when the pressure was on , they would be working long hours and and coming home at all Hours, And Robert Stemple was a very nice Man, Roger Smith Well.....
From what you say, it’s amazing they could put out new cars at all.
@@DinoLondis "too big to fail"...Sheer intertia kept GM going for probably 10 years beyond the point most customers should have abandoned them. I have only owned 1 GM product, a 1994 Chevrolet Caprice Wagon. I bought it used in 2002, dirt cheap. It broke constantly, but parts were cheap, readily available and most of the repairs I could do myself. In reality the Caprice served me well, but compared to my mid 90's Nissans it was a step below in quality and reliability...but "it was cheap"
@@jimbrown5091 The Tahoe kept Chevy and GM alive for a few extra years -- it was the only American-made, full-size family+boat-hauler left with RWD and a column-shift.
@@jimbrown5091 Saying a vehicle isn't as reliable as a mid-90's Nissan is truly saying something...
Adam your depth of knowledge about the automobile industry, especially GM, always impresses me!
There are a lot of "car history" channels, but yours continues to be the best. Not only do you have hands-on experience with so many cars, from driving to maintaining, but you also have the insight to analyze much of financial and management. Car guys typically know cars, not car companies: and here you are with lots of knowledge and experience with both!
For full disclosure, I wasn't around at the time, but I've always felt that GM's two greatest downfalls occured earlier: decreased quality throughout the 1970s, and perception of the brands. The first of these is pretty obvious, a combination of rush designed, poor quality control, strikes, etc... which all US automakers faced, but GM seemed to be the biggest victim of. Perhaps its because their previous cars had been really high quality vehicles by comparison? Chrysler had quality issues since 1957 (or at least the market had that perception of them), while Ford worked really hard to maintain quality during the 70s and advertised the hell out of it. The second factor, brand perception, was I think a deeply cultural change as people began to be disillusioned by "old fashioned Americana". Cadillac had been an international standard for luxury in the 1950s, but by the 1970s, it had been replaced by Mercedes Benz. Volkswagen had gotten a magnificent reputation for build tough, simple Beatles that people loved and felt enthusiasm for. GM's bread and butter, the cars that really drew people into their showrooms, had their big comfortable boats and muscle cars, but these suffered heavily from quality cuts and of course government regulation. The big boats were also seen as being for old people, and the muscle cars were seen as seriously uncool.
I think GM was doomed to fail. The Japanese made great cars and had built in marketing simply because they weren't the Status-quo. Same for the Germans. Management missteps like this 1984 reorganization certainly didn't help, but I think GM simply couldn't change its entire image of so many divisions overnight: they would've had to abandon the few vehicles they made that were still excellent... case in point, look how the B-Body platform stuck around through 96, before GM decided to replace big sedans and wagons in the market with trucks and SUVs for financial and government regulation reasons. They kept their faithfuls around as long as they could, before trying to move them into something else on the dealer lot. Meanwhile the idea of conquest sales is kinda hilarious. I know people today who still refuse to drive anything made by GM (or Ford or Chrysler for that matter) simply because they're American brands. The brand perception and public's opinion of their quality never recovered after the 1970s.
What's funny now is how all these once unloved GM cars of the post 1973 era are finally starting to gain some popularity. While the glory days might've been over, GM was still doing some decent work in spite of the cascading failures stacking up against them. I saw a late 70s Caprice sedan tonight, and I was stunned by how handsome that body design really is, when it can catch some street lights after a light misting of rain. So much artistry and curvature for a vehicle called the "box caprice". It was the same color as the '77 9C1 Impala you have/had in light green.
It wasn't so much that "GM decided to replace big sedans and wagons in the market with trucks and SUVs for financial and government regulation reasons," as it was the market telling GM to go that way. When unleaded fuel and the requisite catalytic converters came with the 1975 models, a portion of the public reacted by moving to pickups, vans, and SUVs, which wouldn't be hit with unleaded fuel and catalytic converter requirements until the 1979 models. All of the Big Three offered trim packages on those vehicles that were comparable to their full-size passenger cars, and the same array of optional equipment choices -- including air conditioning, multiple-speaker stereo cassette radios, and styled aluminum wheels -- were also offered in the trucks. When GM began its downsizing program with the 1977 B- and C-Bodies (the full-size cars), those new models still had most of the utility and towing capacity of the previous generation that they were replacing. However, when the A-bodies (mid-sized cars) were downsized in the following year (1978), their towing capacities were severely reduced. Those who'd been towing a boat or small-to-medium-sized travel trailer with a pre-'78 Chevelle or Cutlass wagon and needed to replace that older model found that the new models couldn't handle the load. However, a Chevy/GMC pickup or Suburban or Blazer could -- and at the same price with just as much comfort and luxury as the passenger car.
The perception that the larger SUVs and other trucks were "safer" than the smaller passenger cars also led many buyers to switch from cars to trucks. (They do sit higher, enabling their occupants to see more of the road and traffic ahead.) Since fuel economy standards and safety requirements for trucks aren't as stringent for trucks as they are for cars, it's easier and more financially advantageous for all auto makers to expand their engineering and marketing efforts to trucks than to passenger cars. Prior to 1980, trucks accounted for about 35% of all new vehicle deliveries. Today, trucks account for two-thirds (about 67%) of new vehicle deliveries.
@@robertobrien9706 Good observations and I do agree. I was generalizing when, yes, there were absolutely other factors making a big impact on the situation. But that's kinda the point of my post: GM was doomed. Their car division was never going to last, and trucks have absolutely replaced what was considered a "family car" 50+ years ago.
My Dad worked for GM until he retired in 1984. I had started working for SATURN in 1985, and loved the experience. Then all of the reorganizations had ramped up to the point where no one could keep track of who was in charge and I was so glad that we were isolated from the chaos!
Eventually we were all sucked into the General’s mess and scattered across the Warren (Michigan) tech center. Supplier integration was eventually disbanded, but by then I had decided to retire at age 63. It was just too stressful to be a part of any longer!
You got a lifetime free ride pension from General Motors so what exactly are you complaining about ?? New hires get a measly $15.87 an hour and NO PENSIONS
Obviously you've never been in a contract negotiation. You're offered 6%. It's the members who decide how to divy it up. Wages, health, pension. So you're trading. Nothing is free.
@@gregorylyon1004 Lifetime pension? My pension was recalculated when I was moved to GM proper, and it was frozen at just over $700 per month. I figured that it would probably buy me a few tanks of gas or something along those lines.
Ross Perot’s relationship with GM may be worth exploring.
Oh boy would it be. I heard some fascinating tales from someone who used to work at EDS in Warren in the early days.
And Mary Barra?
@@warphammerI worked for EDS in the GM Tech Center in Warren
When I got out of the Navy in 1973, I was offered a scholarship to GM Training Center in Burbank, CA. They taught me how to work on GM cars, including how to rebuild quadrojet carburators and rebuild A/C compressors. After graduation, I went to work for an Oldsmobile dealer . A great experience .
After 1980 there were 2 GMs. There was FWD GM which was all the passenger cars from the 80s and 90s, few which people remember fondly (97 Grand Prix was the only one I like). And then there was RWD GM which was the truck and SUV lines. Those stayed true to their roots and to this day are the GM vehicles that remain popular and never went out of style. Fact- if it wasn't for the truck lineup gm woulda gone under in 1991. No question.
I can add that in 1984, I was selling Oldsmobiles. At that time, they had 3 of the top 10 cars in the US. Cutlass, Delta 88 and Ciera. Those cars turned many drivers into Honda and Toyota drivers. I can't tell you how disappointing it was to sell a new car on Saturday only to see it in the service line on Monday morning. 20 years later, they were gone.
The 84 Delta and cutlass were better than many toyotas and hindas
Roger Smith was the primary cause of GM's downfall. He is considered one of the worst CEOs in history. His policies of corporate conformity were disastrous for all of the divisions.
Agreed. Roger Smith was also an absolute autocrat who didn't care if he scuttled the entire corporation and long as he could personally siphon off income for himself. Although making money by producing and selling automobiles was the long standing mantra of GM, Smith preferred to invest in other enterprises like Hughes Aircraft, etc. He paid no attention to those investigating market trends unless he could reap some benefit for himself, like Saturn. Creating Saturn was a complete insult to Chevrolet Division it was somewhat parallel to Ford's Edsel program. H. Ross Perot explained it to him publicly, which really set Smith into a tantrum. One thing for sure if you wanted to reorganize a corporation, Perot could do it. In simple language Roger Smith was the proverbial wart on the ass of progress.
@@geoffmorgan6059 I can remember getting into work arguments in 1986 or so about what a mistake I thought Saturn was. Wish I had made some bets on that one!
Absolutely. Read the book CALL ME ROGER. It describes the train wreck marriage of GM and EDS.
@@jwelchon2416 Also "Roger and Me" the documentary film by Michael Moore.
@@geoffmorgan6059 Moore's a fool.
I bought a new 1980 Pontiac Phoenix, V-6 with 4-speed manual. Great car for our young family. Roomy, practical, yet a hoot to drive with great power and handling. But the maintenance issues (primarily brakes and electrical) killed it for me, so in 1984 I bought a new Dodge Caravan V-6, which remained with us for 10 years, 150,000 miles, was given to one of my employees who kept it for another 50,000 miles. I replaced it '84 with a '94 Caravan V-6 that we gave to our daughter in 1999 with 175,000 miles on it. She took it to over 250,000 miles.
Another huge part of GM's restructuring was the purchase of Electronic Data Systems(EDS) and making it a subsidiary of GM. At that time each division ran it's own computer systems and none of them communicated or interacted with each other well at all. Organizational infighting abounded, the GMISCA(General Motors Information Systems and Communication Activity) was charged with trying to integrate all IT systems prior to the EDS acquisition and estimated it would take 12 years to accomplish. EDS was brought in and went to work on that at warp speed under the initial direction of Ross Perot and we managed to complete that integration in just over 5 years . Ross ruffled a lot of feathers with Roger Smith and the GM board and was paid 750 million to basically go away. I lived through all of that starting in 1985 and they were some amazing times!
Always loved Perot's story about how at EDS if somebody saw a rattlesnake in the building, well, you kill the damn snake.
At GM they form a comittee to study snakes.
From all accounts I have read and heard since the 1980's that pretty much sums up the Roger Smith era of GM.
Brilliant! I think that this type of series could really flourish on your channel. My dad worked as a millwright for Fisher Body in Flint and was laid off in 1987. I remember that year being a lean Christmas at our house. We almost had to move to New York state before he landed a job in town at GM Truck and Bus thanks to his seniority.
My brand new 1986 El Camino had the balancer bolt shear off. Said balancer walked out, took off the crankshaft key, and started shaking like a paint mixer.
Into the dealership it went. Pulled out the engine, and replacement of the crankshaft was the fix. 12K on the speedometer.
Get it back, and a year or so later, the junk turbo 200R4 transmissions starts acting up. I had to disconnect the lock up solenoid. It would lock in all gears forward except 1st. Then a Chevette could pass me.
The temperature selectors cable pivot broke. I either had full heat or full A/C. Took me awhile to figure that one out.
Then the intake manifold gaskets started leaking oil. At 40K. All of my issues happened at low mileage.
I was glad when a drunkard totaled out that truck. I was DONE.
And you'd have thought that the bugs were worked out by '86, my '78 was the first year of the downsized series.
@@bigmedgeno the resistor controls fan speed, not temp.
Strange thing, my father had a 1983 Regal, made a clicking sound. Then the balancer snapped off. THM200 trans went out also.
Love GM. Pre 1973.
I would definitely agree with you on that, specifically with 1972 being the last year of the true 'hardtop' and convertibles offered on the Malibu/LeMans/Cutlass/Skylark mid-size cars before the 'colonade' took over starting with the '73. Not to be a hypocrite, but the '73-'77 Monte Carlo, Grand Prix and Regal coupes pulled off looking good. I know the 1971-'76 full-size GM's weren't as popular as the '65-'70 models that preceded them, but they were the last to have the cool body styles of the 2 and 4-foor open coupes and convertibles through '75. Although the downsized GM's (starting in '77) were necessary for many familiar reasons, they lost all of the 'romantic', 'fun', 'parade-car' body styles forever, replaced with the generic 2 and 4 door sedans and a station wagon, dropping the 2-door sometime in the '80s. What happened to the full-size cars (I described) is overlooked as the beginning of the end for GM. It wasn't very long into my life this all happened, either. Born in May '57 during GM's pinnacle, I was still a teenager when the name, rank and serial # full size cars debuted in late 1976.
Pre 1971 for me
Pre 1973 leaves out the 77 downsized full size cars and the 78 downsized G intermediates.
@@howardfletcher7206 Correct.
Yep pre 1973 GM was the halcyon days for them.
When it comes to GM construction quality, Adam you mentioned the body construction and interiors of the GM full size cars of 1971 as a turn for the worse.
I totally agree that cars in this generation were really different (and worse) than everything before them, especially in these two areas. All you had to do was to experience how the doors closed. They were awful. In my opinion, the 1970 Camaro and Firebird were two of the best styled American cars of the entire 20th century. Unfortunately these cars with their “LCDs” (loose clunky doors) previewed the poor construction of the 1971 full size vehicles. This construction then also characterized the 1973 mid size cars.
The mid 70’s GM compact cars were somewhat spared because the X-body (Nova, Omega, Ventura, Apollo - NOVA) cars benefitted from a significant facelift of the 1968 body, so the good structure remained intact. That said, at this time other cost cutting measures plagued these cars, cancelling out the goodness of this solid platform. Glued in place headliners, miserable afterthought Landau roofs (which caused roofs to rust, especially in California), and poor quality interior materials all led up to cars that were almost worthless after 7 years or 100,00 miles. I had the feeling that GM had lost all respect for their customers.
Everyone knows that customer loyalty takes a long time to build, and in some cases it takes a while to degenerate. Lifelong “Chevy families” would never think to buy a Toyota back then, and these loyalists were “rewarded” with the Vega and Chevette. I think after these two debacles, in the most relevant segment of the market in the 70’s, the sub-compact market, GM gave loyalists pause to leave their brands forever. They regained many customers with the “well designed” FWD X cars at first, as their sales initially were astounding, but fell off sharply as those customers reported how painfully they had been let down by the miserable GM build and component quality.
So now they destroyed their chances in both the compact and subcompact markets. Toyota and Honda were more than willing to offer customers in these segments really well made cars with lots of nice features (first generation Accord for example) bullet-proof reliability, great fuel economy and good price. With the momentum that the Japanese gained at this time, there was no way for GM to reverse the trend. The precipitous drop in market share meant that GM was getting what they deserved. This was all because they forgot to respect their customers and thought they could foist junk upon them. To me that was the core of GM’s downfall.
(Also, to me the 1976 Seville was the last hurrah of the glory of how GM could build great cars. It had the solid X body platform as a basis, made only better great components, excellent materials and superior build quality. If only that car could have affected GM quality as much as GM rooflines in the 1980’s…)
Well said indeed...
My parent's, both WWII veterans, had to swallow their pride and purchase a 1976 Toyota Corolla, for a second vehicle. There was really no decent small American built car available. They stuck with their full-sized Fords, as their main cars, through the rest of their lives and bought an Escort in 1982, as their second car. The Toyota remained the only foreign car that they ever bought.
I grew up wanting nothing but GM cars but recently I found myself getting a Hyundai car and I will never go back to GM again.
@@jeffhands7097 I remember the awful soft cloth interiors of the early 1970's. After a few years and exposure to the sun the cloth started to deteriorate. The fabric would split and tear. Most American cars at the time had them. My parents owned Volkswagens at the time and there were serious problems there with that brand too. They switched brands and went to GM. The 1980 Chevy Malibu with the 231 Buick V-6 was bullet proof, and was around in the family for 16 years. My 1986 Chevette which I bought brand new also was around for another 16 years, and never had any problems. The problem with the Chevette was lack of power. The early years of the Chevette were also plauged with problems that GM did not address during the first couple of years of production. The Chevette was discontinued in the United States in 1987 but continued to be produced in other countries until the 1990's.
@jeffhands - very well said.
Not to hijack but we were a GM family for a long time.
Not today.
I could expound for days but only wish add while many have mentioned correctly how incompetent Roger Smith was, let us not give Rick Wagoner a pass.
Just recently I saw an old interview with him. He was asked what model he currently drove. He didn’t even know!
When I was a child I assumed I would always be driving GM cars like my papa. I just knew I would have the square and oval GM keys I’m my pocket. GM broke my heart when they produced second- rate boring cars in the 1980s. My family went over to Toyota in the 1980s and never went back. It is sad really. Your videos bring back the glory days when American cars were art and reflected the glories of the nation in the 20th century.
Fascinating as always Adam. I love that on the commemorative B-O-C plate, the word employees is misspelled....
As to the shoddy products, I bought my first new car after college from Ford. It came from the factory with a bent axle. I can tell similar stories about friends who bought GM and Chrysler products during that time. Then you have the Vega and Pinto. Shoddy products from US automakers in the 1970s is fact! I think the downfall of all the American car companies started during the 1970s. Because of poor quality, many customers went to Japanese products and never came back. This trend is somewhat still going on, though not as drastically.
I don't think today anybody makes a really terrible car.
So, it seems everyone learned from the fast, reckless decisions you mention.
@@67marlins See the Korean car brands. Read up on BMW, See the issues with most brands CVT transmissions. Read up on Fords double clutch transmissions. What you say is generally true, but clunkers are still out there. Ford and GM car quality is generally far, far better than in the 1970s.
With quality you need to differentiate between the engineering quality and the manufacturing quality. Engineers can do a crappy job and even the best manufacturing can't fix that problem. But even the best engineered product can be built poorly. Either one results in a crappy product but takes a different approach and audience to fixing.
@@gregsmith5132 True. The bent axle on the car I bought in the 1970s was a manufacturing quality issue. The poor quality of the Vega and Pinto were design quality issues.
When I was young and doing OK at my first "real" job, I bought a new 1988 Cavalier Z24. I loved that car the whole time I had it. (I traded it in a couple of years later on a used Corvette). I can't tell you how many times I took it back to the dealer, resulting in a computer reflash or EGR replacement! It was well over five times, probably around ten or more. One day within the first six months of ownership, I drove to a concert and the car overheated. I found that the plastic electric fan had been mounted in such a way that the moving part contacted the shroud and prevented it from spinning. Evidently it had been this way since day one, I had just never sat in traffic long enough for anything to happen. The bracket for the trunk lid scraped along the mounting hardware when opening and closing the trunk, leaving a streak of no paint. I fixed that myself by bending the metal out of the way.
I was young and didn't know any better back then. Actually, I thought it was great that I had a new car and all this stuff was covered under warranty! I still kind of like that little car, looking back, but I now realize how atrocious the quality control was back then.
Looks like there was plenty of $ to have trinkets and plates made to 'celebrate' ... but no money to engineer window cranks that didn't break.
Or ignition switches
The UAW loves its swag.
@@paulfrantizek102you spelt executives wrong.
And, with the exception of the IRS, a government that only had for dominating and controlling other countries to actually function in a way to save these companies from taking a path of disaster.
Paying lifetime pensions is what bankrupted General Motors
The big "Buick"sign on the factory defined our neighborhood.
Our dads had worked there.
When the BOC went up it was kind of a bummer.
Excellent video. Other auto channels do not provide this level of thought and research
Thank you so much for all that you share. You are a true automotive enthusiast !!
I agree, CAFE regulations didn't give them the time needed to develop and fully tested everything first to avoid the problems before release. And the CAFE 'footprint' rules that basically exempted trucks and SUVs from the same rigid fuel economy standards is what ruined it altogether
That might explain why the cars sucked but their trucks and SUVs were solid and reliable loved to this day?
Agreed!
Same thing happening again… this time it’s the EV mandate.
As Adam's videos have regularly reminded us, GM had a portfolio of fuel efficient products in production in Europe before the 1973 oil crisis and CAFE. They had decades of experience building small cars overseas before they were forced to do so for North America. I think it is pretty obvious the CAFE exemptions for profitable pickups and SUVs were put their by lobbyists for the Detroit automakers.
Hence there are no more large rwd sedans made today, yet a plethora of trucks and SUVs.
Thank you Adam. I really enjoyed this and it is interesting and informative. What you share is true. I know Oldsmobile and the all the GM brands suffered under BOC and CPC groups. I was told told BOC would make the large and luxury cars and CPC would make the midsized and small cars. We see how the turned out. Then throw Saturn into this mix and GM Europe, GM Brazil, GM Mexico and GM Australia(Holden) and other branches. You can see how this would be an issue. GM has paid dearly for this reorganization. The sad part is people do not know this or realized what you are sharing. This was a good idea and video. People are so quick to say the things they do about GM without the facts. Please continue this deep look and series.
Well said
THANK YOU ! ! I entered college in 1978 and was interested in business/economics. I saw the confusion in GM and ran away, into Medicine ! Most happy to be retired now.
My father indulged me, so I drove an Audi 5000 in 1979. It was wonderful, yet it angered me. GM and Ford should be better than a company like Audi. Well, as I mentioned, I ran away from the issue that still haunts me.
You were lucky to get an Audi during that time when they weren't so astronomical in price and less complicated and more reliable. I used to be a fan of the 5000 and also the 100s in the early 90s. I was going to look into getting a 90 or 100 until a friend of mine who owned a 100 talked me out of it.
He said you have to make sure if you own a car like this, that you are going to have the money to fix it when it breaks.
"You dodged a bullet"...
@@Porschedude8 Indeed. I really wanted to be a fan and like that car. But evidence showed me afterwards I was glad I just went with a Taurus. 🤣
We did not abandon the domestic automakers, they abandoned us.
@@HAL-dm1eh I had great hope for the original Taurus. It was designed as a complete vehicle, with all the subcomponents specifically selected for that vehicle, rather than as a "parts-bin special" as was the usual GM practice. However, by the 3rd generation, Ford had fallen back into their old ways.
Roger Smith runs the company in the ground and rewards himself with huge bonuses on the way out the door
Sounds like what's happened to much of business across the USA, which was built by men in overalls and destroyed by men in suits.
Was GM in trouble before Ms. Barra took over?
It's the American way!
@@glennso47 The company had been heading downhill years before her arrival.
Paying lifetime free ride pensions is what bankrupted General Motors. Not Roger Smith
I really enjoyed his video, Adam! Others like this would be very welcome! Thanks!
I got my drivers license in 1985 and my choice was usually to drive the 74 Galaxie 500 or the 76 Honda civic. Those Japanese cars were just SO MUCH better in terms of build quality, engineering, ride and handling, more dependable more fun to drive but most importantly it got 3X the gas mileage and gas was expensive when you earn $3.35 an hour
So true. After college I went from an 85 Plymouth Reliant to an 88 Honda Prelude Si 4ws. Just sitting inside the Honda was awesome. Everything was high quality and assembly was top notch. Driving it you could feel from all the components it was designed by a collective engineering team, not an isolated team from steering, suspension, brakes, engine etc.
Sadly though while the domestics did go up in quality Honda has gone down. The interior quality of my 15 Accord and 16 Odyssey are more on par with the 85 Plymouth than the 88 Prelude. The material quality they use now just isn't as good and the assembly isn't as good as it was.
@ I then drove a string of late 80’s and 90’s Pontiacs where you could see that GM was aiming to compete with Honda/Toyota and they were OK. Then I bought an 04 Pontiac Vibe brand new with Toyota engine and transmission. 310K miles and absolutely no repairs later I still have it and its just Toyotas for me now
What do you expect when General Motors was stuck with unionized workers ???? Union workers are lazy and want lifetime free ride pensions
Ride was horrible on 70s Japanese cars.
@@jamesbosworth4191 that wasn’t my experience. Manual steering on those civics kept the driver connected to the rode. The full size American cars floated like boats dipped into curves and nose-dived when braking.
I wonder if anyone at GM watches these videos because they're very good.
Good overview of the corporate challenges that GM endured. Thanks Adam.
Great job on a very complex subject, Adam! I was around as a supplier to GM back then and worked with upper management in one of the divisions. The confusion in the white collar ranks was understandable as this BOC/CPC change unfolded. Career paths were upset as the line and staff management that had been in place for decades was upended. Just my two cents worth; but GM was and remained focused after the change on the internal processes and management flow as the answer to their problems in the marketplace. The reorganization only compounded the complexity of the system and made it worse. They lost sight of why the corporation existed and the needs in the marketplace - producing vehicles that people actually wanted to buy! We all see now how that worked out, unfortunately. The old adage of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship sinks applies here.
It wasn't until a decade later when Bob Lutz was brought on board and was given the authority to revamp GM's product development system that some common sense and rationality was applied, needless complexity was eliminated and designers and engineers were allowed to produce vehicles that really swung for the fences again.
As with any complex subject, there is no one simple answer to the question of what felled General Motors hold on their market. It died from a thousand cuts, both internal and external.
A clue as to when it started might be a quote from the great Alfred Sloan, the man who created the GM organization we all know. He was GM Chairman when he gave an interview back in the 1950's. His interviewer asked a question about how GM had become the most successful corporation in the world at that time by building cars.
"Young man," Sloan chided, "General Motors doesn't make cars. General Motors makes money."
Exactly 😂❤
You’ve hit upon one of my absolute favorite business study areas. I read and think about this topic to this day. CPC/BOC has always seemed like a very awkward split that wound up creating more redundancies than needed shared resources. I’m also not sure the big NAO reorg in the 90s was right either - it wound up continuing to neuter the divisions further into “brand management” sales/marketing niche orgs causing the death of several of the divisions due to catering each division into ever smaller sales niches. Great for differentiating detergent but not great for generating the volume needed to justify different divisions. I wonder if the best decision would have been to maintain shared engineering (Fisher) and assembly (GMAD), maintain stronger divisions (more product overlap but more volume and share), but spin off components - which would eventually be done with Delphi but too late to save itself. Surely GM knew they couldn’t stay cost competitive with captive component operations as early as the late 70s. Further savings and speed to market could be achieved by engineering fewer more versatile platforms (the Japanese already were). Lowering the DOA thresholds and leaning out the committees and processes (Ross Perot had suggested this early on).
Hindsight is 20/20 and I still don’t think GM has the right structure today. But CPC/BOC was a disaster before it was even born. It’s hard to wrap logical business sense over it and still seems arbitrary. It also further complicates global ops. So much wrong with it.
Thank you for this video. I hope to see many more like it!
I have read John DeLorean’s book On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors. At least how I understand it the heads of GM just kept doing business as usual even though the market had changed drastically. Failure to recognize this and the attitude of “We’re invincible” were two major factors that led what to we have today .
That same ARROGANCE led to their complete downfall in 2008
@
Perfect comment.
Just a brilliant video, Adam. I had no idea about the 1984 CPC/BOC reorganization. This was not something that even your typical die-hard GM buyer was even aware of... at least I wasn't. It wasn't common knowledge among the buying public. It's no surprise that it failed. Despite my loyalty over the years, my view of GM is sadly no longer the same. They are simply not the same company they were in the 60s, when they were producing beautiful, high performance vehicles. I think the decline began in the 1970s when the federal government began issuing mandates to the industry.
I have a 2014 Holden Calais' you're right, the modern rwd GM cars are MUCH MUCH better than land barges like my mates 1976 Olds' 98...
True, but some mandates are vital. For example, leaded gasoline needed to go away ASAP. I'm surprised aviation gasoline still contains low amounts of lead.
It's easy to do that when you are basically using legacy engineering and have 50% of the market. However, as Adam showed in the chart, it's much more difficult when you are trying to do it with an unweidly and costly company structure and less market share,
The real beginning of the end for GM was selling junk -- like the 1978 LeSabre with a 3.8L V6 that my parents foolishly bought ("GM knows what they're doing," said my dad). If you pressed the gas pedal more than half way down, the engine would just stall. It spent weeks at the dealer's service department to no avail. My parents were nearly in tears because they really needed that car. Forty-six years later, nobody in my family has purchased another GM product.
I worked in a GM dealership parts department from 1980 through 1995. Even today in 2024 I occasionally will have a part number zing through my noggin, and the number is for a fast moving part, like a remanufactured 440T4 transmission (8658903), or a new rack and pinion (26003943).
In other words, parts that should last the life of the car were failing at a very high rate.
My brother had a 1978 LeSabre with the V6.. it was the best car he ever owned
@@gregorylyon1004Was it the Sport Coupe with the turbo?
@@gregorylyon1004 Was it a turbo coupe V6?
I’m a millennial but I’ve always perceived the turning point for GM to be around 1980 give or take. The malaise era. It’s a shame the person in charge then (Roger Smith) did such a terrible job transitioning GM to a modern global automaker. Thru the sheer brute force of its size and market share it staggered into the 21st century, when it was finally felled by the Great Recession.
The internet likes to make a passion play of obsessing over every flawed product from Vega to Aztek, but an inherently healthy company could’ve survived the occasional product failure. GMs relentlessly poor decision making in the 70s/80s was the lethal wound.
You are correct.
Wow, great information, Adam. I was there from 1980 to 2001 at Delco Electronics. I was hourly and ended up salaried. I was so busy at the time I didn't realize what they were trying to do but hopefully I can start putting it together with your help. I loved the Auto Industry. I remember being in a meeting in 1992 and they were saying North American Operations was loosing money. I was thinking how are we staying in business. It definitely got my. attention.
Bro, brilliantly explained. Thanks for posting this video!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Great episode!
I enjoy your history and business discussions just as much as actual car features. I would love to hear the same kind of history lesson regarding ford and chrysler
You nailed it Adam. Wonderful explanations.
Thank you so much for this topic. I've been waiting for a youtuber or website to cover it forever. I think the restructuring was absolutely necessary. Remember how gm started, it was a holding company that owned a bunch of car companies. Then Alfred Sloan consolidated and restructured it into the brand ladder that became their core business. By the 80s a newer simplified corporate structure was critical. However in the 80s I think the worst decisions Roger Smith made were 2 huge ones that never get mentioned. First was to go off into defense and computer systems by buying Hughes Aircraft and EDS. This was billions in cost that was just distraction to their core business of designing and selling cars. The second was the Saturn brand. Billions and billions of capital was funneled away from the core brands to start what was basically a whole new car company. Smith's goal was to have internal competition and have Saturn as a Japanese manufacturing model inspire the rest of the company but in the end the law of gravity prevailed, and Saturn just fell into the parent GM and replaced Olds in the mid-2000s. The Saturn Car was good but it should have just replaced the J cars. There never should have been a Saturn brand. Instead, billions were funneled away from the rest of the company creating resentment between the divisions and top management, as well as Saturn itself. How can you expect Chevy and Pontiac to compete in small cars when you take all the capital away to start this side project? How can you expect Cadillac to compete with Mercedes, BMW Lexus when the capital is going to a new brand that's going to need more capital for down the road?! Those 2 decisions of the 80s really were big screwups that nobody talks about when it comes to GMs downfall.
In addition, there is more to it and that's simply GM Hubris from being #1 for so long. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was always rooting for GM but then disappointed with the product. Every single car felt like it had been designed by someone totally out of touch by what was in style at the time. Take my dad's A body century wagon. The interior felt like it was designed in the 70s with the horizontal speedometer and tiny buttons, chrome trim everywhere, etc. THis is when ford chrysler japanese makes all had big round analog gages, big knob controls for hvac, very well thought out ergonomics. The cars, (especially the interiors) just screamed GM Hubris, "WEVE BEEN #1 SINCE 1928! DON'T TELL US HOW TO DESIGN CARS! WE TELL YOU WHATS IN STYLE!" Every single GM car I'd sit in and think, what were they thinking? Like the W body Grand Prix had this tiny little panel the size of a credit card with tiny buttons and a tiny slider for hvac. It was just not practical. To me that's got nothing to do with corporate restructuring it's just product designers totally out of touch with what the public wanted cuz they had been so successful for so long. The fact that Ford and Chrysler were able to turn things around with product and GM stuck with their antiquated UGLY 70s sheer look styling says it all.
In classic fashion for me, i was just bitter at GM for dropping the RWD platform A's. But, I failed to recognize the overall situation from a 40,000' perspective. Quite possibly one of the best videos you've done!!
General Motors could not continue to meet corporate average fuel economy standards with rear wheel drive platform vehicles. They had absolutely no choice but to switch to front drive cars
I love your videos. I'm a late gen X'er, and didn't have a lot of experience with GM growing up, other than my mom's Olds Alero or later a 2003 Chevy Malibu, but even those cars had problems, usually something like the window regulators, water pumps, fuel pumps, and not with a lot of miles when they were traded in. The engines were fine. As a consumer, I rather not have my car in the shop.
Moons ago, I really wanted a 2012 Chevy Cruze, however, a terrible experience at the local Chevy dealership pushed me towards a 2012 Honda Civic and long and short, I still have that Civic and the Cruze wound up being a terrible car model, with reports of pump issues and failing turbos. And as a former Michigander, it was hard to not buy something Big 3. But I was also having a crisis of faith in reliability and resale value and reputation means a lot.
When I think of malaise era cars, I think of the Chevy Vega. What a pretty, yet ultimately doomed car. The intent was great, but the execution was terrible. If GM would've nailed those series of cars, I think they would've been fine, but they began nailing their own coffin instead.
Product redundancy and poor quality control at the factory did them in back in the 70s. It's ironic because many well designed cars and car parts like the Oldsmobile gas V8 were often some of the best ever made.
One of your best videos Adam! Thank you and best wishes for a great Holiday Season.
For me the 'beginning of the end' for GM was when they put Chevy engines into Oldsmobiles and thought nobody would notice. As someone else said, they did not respect their customers.
That, then the type 200 trans, were probably the straw that broke the camel's back.
Other car makers have also done the same. Look at KIA and Hyundai. Some of their cars share the same drive trains. Also Toyota and Subaru have a a sports car that is the same with rebranding going on. They copied GM. Many of GM's cars share the same parts so the part you buy to replace the one that fails is the same. GM did that to save money on parts. When you buy in larger quantity the cost is cheaper. I always found the cost of many auto parts was cheaper when the same part was used amongst the car makers many brands. These people were bean counters trying to increase profit to benefit the stockholders. The stockholders want their dividends paid on their investment.
@@ericknoblauch9195 I agree with you about other automakers, but GM built their whole business model on differentiation between the brands. Albert Sloan started this in GM as you were supposed to buy entry-level with a Chevy, then as you move up the ladder in your career, you bought Pontiac, then Olds, then Buick, and finally Cadillac when you have "arrived", but you stayed in the GM family. If you have "made it" enough to have graduated up the ladder to an Olds, you did not want to open the hood and see a low-brow Chevy motor in there for crying out loud. Customers were pissed and sued GM over it. GM with this one move undercut their entire business model. They in effect told their customers it was all marketing BS and one brand is the same as another.
@johnstrauss8061 GM also put the 350 V-8 Chevy engine in Cadillac's. Cadillac was the top end luxury brand. The 350 is known for it's durability, reliability, and longevity. But in a luxury car. Cadillac buyers should have requested their own power for the brand. GM tried to change that when the Northstar V-8 came. The Northstar also had it's problems with the head bolts. The problem with the Northstar was not rectified until 2006.
@@ericknoblauch9195 BUT, you destroy your product when all you try to do is please the stockholders. Then the stock becomes near worthless. Shortsightedness personified.
Thanks!
Thanks to you!
So sad to remember that GM was not just the largest auto company in the world, it was the largest CORPORATION in the world... Maybe they should have held on to Frigidaire? 😢
Pretty much all domestic refrigeration companies and household appliance divisions have been sold to China.
Whirlpool still has manufacturing in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Electrolux is present in Kinston, North Carolina.
When they got rid of Frigidaire, they turned Cadillacs into refrigerators and Chevrolets into stoves.
@@fleetwoodpup8328 Electrolux is Swedish.
@@stevevarholy2011 And ironically, THAT is who owns Frigidaire now! 😊
Sadly, Whirlpool bought up all the other American brands - Amana, Jenn-Air, Maytag, KitchenAid - and turn them all into Whirlpool crap. Thus, I have a poorly designed, overpriced range 'made' by KitchenAid, and a dishwasher made by Amana that is far inferior to the Hobart-made KitchenAid dishwashers. The only thing I have that makes sense and still works better than any other microwave I have owned (despite being Whirlpool now) is the Amana RadarRange...
You do a great job (as always) of laying out cause vs. interim effect vs. later effect. As a kid of a family that bought both Ford and GM cars in the 70s and 80s, the downsizing missteps combined with the relentless de-contenting (plastic fantastic but also general cheapness) really made my family and others look elsewhere. Dad went from a '78 Grand Marquis 2-door to an early 80s Bonneville Model G wagon and the difference was stark. At the same time the "foreign" makes offered higher tech (looking at least), better HP per MPG, and value (options / dollar) seemingly overnight. I can't believe (as you point out several times) that this was a shock / surprise. I'd love to understand more about the mindsets in this period.
GM employe here. We used to call BOC "Big Old Cars".
I see you also use the GM method of shorthand; i.e. 'employe'. Adam covered that a while ago.
I really think today's Buicks look like Bigfat TURDS .........
@@61rampy65 fuel "gage" lol
CPC = Cheap Puny Cars. BOC = Big Opulent Cars
@@mikeweizer3149 Buicks? SUVs are not Buicks. They haven't made a REAL Buick in many years.
When they needed to develop a product as refined as the little Honda Accord, they were stuck trying to meet CAFE, I never thought of ALL the components that had to be reinvented, right down to the door handles. All our 60-76 Caddies had the SAME door handles! With Frigidaire and EMD and later GMAC mixed in, there's more than a whiff of what happened to Penn Central RR in this story. It's a miracle there IS a GM in 2024.
Thanks to the US government in 08. GM was too big to let fail.
Fascinating! Thanks Adam...
Adam -- Another excellent video, with a lot of great commentary. Your efforts to interview retired auto executives and stylists in the great state of Michigan are always interesting and have clearly led to a very educated following of your channel.
I have always felt that Detroit's refusal to embrace emissions standards in the late 1960's was a huge part of the American auto industry decline. If the Big 3 had put engineering towards their own fully-developed in-house fuel injection systems, instead of feedback carburetors and throttle-body fuel injection, even on their regular old push-rod motors, they would not have lost the millions of buyers that they did from say, 1978 to 1998. (And AMC could have bought the one of them for their engine line!)
Instead, you have my 1985 Lincoln Continental, with throttle-body fuel injection, that is powerless in a way modern drivers cannot comprehend! The Big 3 all were engineering powerhouses at one time in the 1960's, but really squandered that over time. -Bobo KC
It's hard to point to one single event when GM jumped the shark. It's usually an accumulation of small things that go unchecked or uncorrected that in time really add up. I think for Cadillac it was when they came out with the 4100 and the 8-6-4 engines. Both of those were just terrible failures that really tarnished Cadillac's name and image. I don't think Cadillac has ever recovered from those.
It didn't, but their decline started with the 71s. Cadillac was no longer in charge of their assembly. A new "Assembly Division" had taken over that function, and it showed.
Adam, this is superb 👏
May I suggest seeds for the fertile soil of your imagination 🙏
1) Imagine a parallel timeline where this same decision was successful,
2) Which company has done this successfully? VW, with its myriad brands?
3) compare and contrast GM, Ford (with its PAG group), Stellantis, BMC, Rootes Group...., and,
4) the care and feeding of automotive subsidiaries, ie:- Holden, Vauxhall, Opel, Saab, Volvo, et al.
🖖🙏
They had great cars in Europe and Australia they could have made in the USA but management was too stupid!
And arrogant.
Australia yes, but most Americans don't like European cars. Too unreliable, even compared to 80s American cars. They are fine as long as you don't try to drive them!
Awesome. This is the kind of video a lot of us like. It brings out some great comments from people who were there too.
Are you going to talk about the UAW and GM some day?
A great perspective on the downfall of what was once considered an industrial giant that was "too big to fail". GM also was quintessential Americana, as I remember taglines from the early to mid 1970s such as "See the USA in Your Chevrolet".
Sadly, today, GM's North American offerings seem to be limited to large pick-up trucks and SUV's. As I understand the current business model, GM is much more of a car manufacturer in China than it is at home.
The typo on the plate at 16:45 says it all.
No wonder they lost the plot.
That was an intentional spelling. There’s an entire story behind that.
1979 is when I first had problems with GM. I purchased a '79 Monza Spyder that had multiple problems, two different color mirrors and Spyder decals also paint peeling off the bumper. The last two Chevrolets that I had were a 2008 Colorado and a 2010 Malibu. Both were poorly made and cured me of my GM addiction. The best GM car I ever owned was a '77 Camaro.
I just shared a similar comment with Adam, people gave the domestics multiple opportunities and eventually gave up. Once in a while we have to remind ourselves that the youngest person who ever watches these videos is the guy who produces them. 😉Adam was not even born when GM began to self-destruct.
Uhm, you might have been a little to young to afford one when they came out, but you should read up on the Vega. Just wow, they were bad. Interestingly enough, the Vega was a (the first?) "corporate" project. Chevy was ordered to sell them but had almost no part in the design and component decisions.
My girlfriend at the time bought a 1974 Vega GT it didn't seem bad, but she got rid of a 68 Camaro RS convertible. Duh! We didn't know that they would be worth so much now. My first new car was a '74 Nova SS .😂. Also I was unaware that the Monza was just an updated Vega.@@The-yp7lr
@@rightlanehog3151I’m in college and I watch these videos. It’s interesting to learn of a bygone America and the gorgeous cars of the the mid 50s - 71ish
@@jackk21 OK!! I will let Adam know he has a subscriber younger than he is. I am sure he will be thrilled by the demographic shift!!
Adam, this was an excellent synopsis of the GM situation. I saw similar scenarios in the downsizing of the aerospace industry post cold war. I was part of the GM / Hughes organization at that time.
At the end of the day, I believe you identified the root cause of any bureaucratic organization regardless of industry. Leaders must drive hard for agility and lean operations. Often, corporate staff while well intended, only add burden to the very thing they are trying to minimize.....
At 15:33, one big reason is budgets. Every year, companies and divisions/subsidiaries within those companies need to create a budget for how to spend the money allotted/available to them. So, if you spend money developing and making a product, that is an expense that needs to be offset by the sale of that product. If you give that product to a sister-company/division, you need them to pay money from their budget to cover the costs you incurred, and even make some money, because you're trying to make a profit to justify your existence to the parent company and their shareholders.
I still contend that the reorganization should have kept all the car brands, but streamlined the product offerings so that there was no overlap. Drop Saturn, sell Saab keep Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet as distinct models with fundamental platform sharing. Chevrolet focused on smaller /cheaper cars. Pontiac with sportier, models, Buick and Olds larger mid-luxury with Cadillac as a pure upmarket brand. No more cookie-cutter cars. Two dealer channels (GM stores and Cadillac stores)...no direct competition between brands. All light trucks under Chevy, all commercial trucks under GMC. I'm no CEO or marketing genius, but I am a lover of cars and history and this plan would have saved the legacy brands.
I 100% agree with this other than GMC only making commercial trucks. GM banks off of the Denali trim models. Though, now that line is not as significant with High Country models. It is an absolute shame what GM has become.
Makes complete sense. However union labor contracts made this type of streamlining impossible.
I mostly agree, but no, chassis sharing, GM and Ford used chassis, not platforms, was bad, as it meant the same car for all divisions, except, of course, for the price. Before 1977, full-size GM cars each had their own chassis as far as wheelbase was concerned. But I would have indeed taken compacts away from Pontiac/Olds/Buick, and mid-sizers away from Olds and Buick as well. Each division would have gone back to their own market niche, just like it used to be.
I think the biggest downfall for gm was just their build quality honestly. Car companies now and car design as a whole shows that people are willing to buy cookie cutter cars regardless of brand (think even within the gm stable with their small suvs that look similar and have the same exact engines). My dad was a mechanic during the 80s and 90s at gm dealers of various makes, and one thing that always comes up in conversation is build quality. Sending out cars for pdis with stuff that wasn't even installed from the factory, but that had the hardware in the center console for something like a different center console. Having poor engines that weren't very reliable overall, making engines like the Northstar that could have been amazing, but got a bad rep and then they took too long to fix that reputation. Same with their transmissions, where it took them way too long to ever correct the issues (like the 4t60 through the 90s and into the 2000s, or the transition from the 700r4 to the 4l60. Optispark in the 92-96 c4 giving it a bad rep and slightly being overblown, or the allante having an anemic engine for the first couple of years
General Motors downfall was to offer workers a lifetime free ride pension for 30 years on the assembly line
@@gregorylyon1004 NO IT WASN'T!!! If pensions are so horrible, how do Japanese and European companies do it and made money? How did WE before the early 2,000s do it? Quit being a corporate shill!
The beginning of the end of GM for me was when I saw that Time magazine cover (I believe it was Time) with the 4 GM intermediates Celibrity,cutlas,century and 6000. The cookie cutter cars were an insult to me and other’s intelligence.
A remarkable, informative video and comments. Thank you.
GM's decline started in the early 1970's right in line when the government started interfering with Cafe ratings, emissions and the mandatory 5 MPH bumpers. The Vega and Astra were a big start to their malaise with aluminum engines without steel cylinder liners, undersized cheap radiators, poor rustproofing and many other cost cuts. Add in undersized 200 Metric transmissions, improperly made camshafts in the 305 Small Block engines, the disastrous 5.7 diesel followed by the even worse 260 diesel and numerous quality control issues with paint, body hardware and cheap materials that were substituted for steel and that pretty much made up the 70's. The 1980's started off with the most recalled car line in history the "X" cars, the Cadillac 8-6-4 fiasco followed by the rushed into production HT 4100 V8, the first year J- car misfire with the 1.8 carbureted OHV 4 cylinder engine, the Cimarron, the overly downsized B, C and E body car lines, the 440 trans-axle issues, the W-body program that they grossly overpaid to launch and was launched years later than originally intended to the 1990's GM garbage interiors, intake gasket issues on both the 60 degree V6 engines and the 3800 series II motors, the Northstar head gasket issues killing off the B-body full sizers and then the F-body cars in the early 2000's.
And the mistakes continue to this day as if they have really not learned anything from the bankruptcy. We still have poor quality control, 5.3/6.2 V8 engines with DFM that eat lifters, various 8/10 speed automatic transmission issues, plenty of recalls, poor product deployments that are half baked, way too much focus on a technology that isn't anywhere near ready for primetime in their massive EV push and discontinuation of many of their popular nameplates with sedans and sport coupes like the Camaro. I am actually surprised they do as well as they do considering all the missteps they keep making but mainly attribute that to massive profit makers like the trucks and full sized SUV's. If you took those out of the equation this company would be in serious trouble!
CAFE started in 1976. It was signed into law by Gerald R. Ford, the republican who pardoned Tricky Dick. GM's decline started with the 71 models. No CAFE or 5 MPH bumpers yet, and minimal emissions crap, but the cars were a big disappointment. The Chevys were OK, I guess, but the Pontiacs had a plain looking interior that was well below what previous models had, and the Buicks and even the Cadillacs were often poorly assembled compared to earlier models, lacking the assembly quality you would expect with such expensive cars. The 73s were a little better, but by then you had 5 MPH bumpers, much stiffer emissions limits, which resulted in EGR, which severely hurts part-throttle performance, milder camshafts, etc. But the worse things were the declining assembly quality. You didn't expect that on a Cadillac or even a Buick.
You are a partisan hack.
@@jamesbosworth4191 I loved those 5mph bumpers.
@@manoman0 Actually I did too. Made the cars look more substantial and more rugged, but Poncoman49 and the pundits didn't. The 73 cars sold fantastically though, so many folks must have liked them.
I started working for GM back in 1975 I built Cadillacs one hell of a place to work
I'll bet it was when you get a lifetime free ride pension from the company
Neat! Bet you had a hand in building my 77 CDV! Thanks for a great car!
@@gregorylyon1004 Workers are SUPPOSED to get a pension for the rest of their lives! Employer-controlled pension funds are INVESTED. What the workers are paid is the RETURN on those investments, so they often cost the employer NOTHING. Union-controlled pension funds are ALSO invested. What the members get is the RETURN on those investments. That's how it works and always has until the Supreme(ly Awful) Court ruled that employer-controlled pension monies are the employer's money to do whatever he sees fit, and if that means no money is left, (because he put it into his profits, whereas before, it could only be used for pensions and related purposes), letting him fraudulently claim that the pension fund is "broke" and is "too expensive" and is "obsolete", etc. Quit being a corporate shill.
clark assembly!
@@gregorylyon1004 Get lost.
It's amazing that with all the effort in the mid-80s to improve efficiency and become more competitive, that GM still managed to drop the ball with regards to the competition, specifically from Japan. The timing of this video is interesting in that GM has just announced a major pullback on their robotaxi program. I can't help but think they are making another major strategic mistake.
No need for robotaxis if public transport was good. But GM made sure if that not happening in the 50s.
Robotaxis are a long off pipe dream.
Excellent commentary, Adam, and I think your line of thinking is very accurate. I'll chuck in a few thoughts as well. To me, one of the reasons for GM's precipitous drop in sales, and in customer satisfaction, was, what I call, "GM Too Good Disease." "We can't make the engine like that, it would be too good." GM was seemingly focused on second or third best when it came to engines, drivetrains, and, most importantly, "feel." The cars felt "light," "plastic-y," and cheap compared to the Japanese counterparts. Spindly little pedals, plastic door handles that crumbled in your hands, creaky instrument panels, paper thin door glass, doors that felt as substantial as a Dorito chip, etc. Add in the engine swapping, lack of choice in body style, horrid engine performance (the full sizers were AWFUL to drive - bog slow), plus the related disasters in brake fires, HT4100 engine failures, THM-200 transmissions, Vega rear axles in V8 Firebirds, etc etc etc.
The cars no longer had that solid, heavy, quality feel. The engines were anemic, transmissions even worse. WAY too much front wheel drive, where it should've only been in the small cars. A near psychotic obsession with CAFE regs when most foreign car builders, particularly German and Euro, luxury cars, wore the "Gas Guzzler" tag like a badge of honor. Cadillac was cheapening its customers out, and even worse, keeping the 1980 body style into 1992 was just unforgiveable.
Someone once told me that Cadillac (or Lincoln for that matter) could never build a car as good as a M-B S Class. I disagree, vehemently. Cadillac could absolutely build a BETTER car. But GM won't let them, nd even if they did, Cadillac has forgotten how to build a modern day car that is as supremely superior, as they once did. EPA regulations be damned. Build the EPA fines into the sticker price the way the Euro builders do and make the best damn cars they can. But they won't. Not any more.
40 MPG cars? Sure, build one or two. No one buys them except when the gas lines come. They dump them just as fast.
50 years later, we're still reacting to the 1974 Arab Oil embargo and energy crises, that has long passed, and will not happen again.
(with tongue in cheek) Ah! But the drop of market share for GM had a positive note: They didn't have to worry about the Federal Trade Commission making any inquiries about dominating the market . . . as years before there had been urban rumors about General Motors getting the Feds attention on such matters.
GM also went overboard in the 1980s with expanding their brands' lineups and introducing Geo and Saturn, which ended up costing GM a lot in a short period. The rebadging GM had been doing since the 70s had also begun to play a toll on finances.
Seeing you did this video and a video on the history of the Pontiac brand, you should do a video on the history of Oldsmobile. I can also picture you publishing books on automotive history and selling them on Amazon Kindle.
I also remember the older clientele at the time
were upset that they weren't getting a Pontiac engine in their Pontiac and so on...
Wasn't there a class action suit against GM on this subject I bring up.
There indeed was. The motorists won. That's why the disclaimer, "May be equipped with an engine from another GM division".
The people behind this channel are probably aware of it but Ingrassia and White's book, _Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry,_ covers the BOC-CPC reorganization in quite a bit of detail. After reading it, and watching this video, I think GM suffered from an inertia problem. By the time it was obvious that they needed to make a change, it was so late that they had to make all the changes at once, on an impossibly short deadline. It was not a recipe for success.
DeLorean was saying that long before the reorg. He devoted a good part of On a Clear Day to the problems the legacy structure of the company had on product development.
The collective weight of bloated cost structures and bureaucratic processes, high unionized labor costs, and souring union relations both delayed change and made changes extremely difficult. Making the best and most desirable products possible took a backseat to making the most possible products at highest margins possible, which combined with the sudden need for small efficient cars which was out of the big 3’s wheelhouse, doomed them in the 70’s.
Spot on. That hideous second downsizing, the diesel engines and fwd did them in. All that and younger people not caring about style and buying mine vans and ugly subcompacts.
This was interesting. I learned what the “CPC” in “CPC Flint” is. The TPI 305 that came in my Z28 has a GM Motorsport decal on the intake plenum that has CPC flint logo on it. knew the motor was made in Flint didn’t know what the CPC was.
Loved the video, very informative.
Thanks Adam, I had no idea about this reorganization. GM was obviously too big to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. But, trimming the company down meant losing so much good talent, as you mentioned about many of the Fisher body employees. While I understand that GM had no choice but to release some of these mistakes before their time due to CAFE, it just amazes me that with all GM's clout, they could not have delayed some of that regulation giving them a chance to really be ready. It's like you say, some of those cars really were great ideas and did many things well. But, the cost cutting, and knowingly releasing flawed vehicles only sealed GMs fate, one customer at a time. Foreign competition was just waiting with open arms for alienated GM owners to switch brands.
All in all, GM initial quality has certainly improved greatly since the sloppy days of the 70s. To me the difference was that although the big cars of the 70s may have been poorly assembled, their long term reliability was excellent. Please don't get me wrong, am not blaming (totally) factory workers for shoddy workmanship, Oftentimes, their best efforts might have been thwarted by line speed requirements and poorly designed/quality controlled pieces that would never fit together properly. No matter how much effort and care was applied on the line.
Again, while I totally understand that GM was at a big disadvantage back when these regulations hit, upper management had not right to continue to kill the company with super high salaries and benefits. I saw the same quick decline occur at OMC, we released outboards in the late 90s that were not ready for the market in an effort to comply with newly imposed EPA requirements. Customers and dealers saddled with those engines are gone forever, same with OMC, breaks my heart.
I'm 65, and have been a Chevy man all my life. Your argument here lines up exactly to my memories of the GM timeline post 1980. I remember the quality issues in the late 70s, followed by the struggle to adapt to the new market realities in the 80s and 90s. I've been a truck guy for the last 25 years, and since 2004 the trucks are pretty darn bullet proof especially at the 2500 level. To me, everyone's cars are mostly boring anymore.
You hadn't had all the fuel and brake lines rot out. Engines drop valves with less than 20,000 miles. Frames that rot out in less than 10 years. Must not be the salt belt. Truck generations after 1998 suck because the steel sucks. GM even made replacement Teflon coated brake and fuel lines. US trucks now are over priced pieces of sh**.
@@northwoodsguy1538no, not in the rust belt. My 98 1500 was a pos. My 2004 1500 is an outstanding truck, and my 17 duramax is like a hardworking Cadillac. I've heard the stories about rust, but I think that effects all vehicles in the rust belt. Agree that the pricing is a little out of line.
After 1980 there were 2 GMs. There was FWD Gm which was all the passenger cars that everyone hates today and there was RWD GM which was teh truck line. Those stayed true to their roots and to this day the full size gm trucks and SUVs are the only GM cars I find appealing.
@@chrisclements1169 The pricing is a little out of line? It's unaffordably out of line.
@@Rick-S-6063lately the cost of steel has a lot to do with it. I sell in a niche steel market, and over the past 20 years steel has incrementally gone through the roof. Products I sell today have more steel in them due to engineering code changes, and cost of raw material is more that twice what it was 20 years ago. Plus, you can run the cost of any new vehicle (or any product for that matter) through a dollar inflation calculator, and you'll see that pricing is not that far out of line, especially when you consider all the bells and whistles included in a modern vehicle, verses 50 years ago.
Very informative, Adam...The Asian Manufacturers impact on the American New Car Market definitely had a fair bit to do with the need for GM to restructure/reorganize...Yep, the beginning of the end for GM and their domination, Adam....Cheers fm Damo.
Interesting insight, and one not known to the general public!
I remember as a kid in the 90s, being in my father's Chevettes, and wishing for the day he could buy an actual car. I knew they were garbage even at 5 year old. Yes, he owned up to five at one point. Only one was ever "working".
Bought a Japanese car at 18 and have never considered a GM.
My family had 6 Chevettes. No problems other than a fuel pump, alignment and AC recharge.
The Chevette was actually a GM England car - Vauxhall - modified to become an American car. English cars from the 70s were notoriously bad.
16:30 Wonder if the spelling of employees as “EMPLOYES”’on the plate pictured was a deliberate internal GM New English spelling to save cost on the expense of extra letters.
The “newspeak” spelling at GM was another one of GM’s bizarre cost cutting moves. Adam has done a video that covers the topic.
a cadillac from the late 1950s to 1981 sounds the same when cranking. so much cadillac interior hardware was more or less common from the 1950s through the end of the brougham in 1992. these are endearing features to me, but I can understand them being emblematic of the difficulty encountered by GM when trying to retool everything in a short span
I was from a G family, more specifically, Buick. First new car was a 1979 Buick Regal Limited turbo. I loved it more than any car I’ve ever owned but it gave e so much trouble. The rear end kept grinding and falling. I think I had it to the dealer 4 times. The end came when the turbo failed, burning oil so much I had to keep a case of oil in the trunk. Broke my heart.
You are so knowledgeable of these subjects, have you written or considered writing a book about this? In particular, I'm intrigued with your knowledge of design.
I think that GM started going downhill in 1978 with the introduction of the shared platform designs. To me, the styling of their cars were too similar across the divisions. If you consider the 1978-87 Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, Regal, and Cutlass designs, there was little to distinguish across those platforms.
As a child of the 60s, it was much easier to distinguish a Chevy from a Pontiac in terms of aesthetics.
Also, how many cars do you own?
I love watching your videos.
Also, a Pontiac in the US was a different and nicer car than a Chevy, with a Pontiac engine.
Just watch Roger and Me and that will tell you what went wrong.
Cool pic of the Fisher Body sign from Hamilton. I got to take a field trip in that plant in high school. Camaro and Firebird body and door panels!
Guess ive had great luck. 87 Celebrity Eurosport, 91 Lumina Z34, 92 Trans Am (still own), 03 Bonneville SSEI, and a Caddy XTS VSport (current own). All have been and are terrific cars. Reliable, fun to drive, and interesting. However, i do meticulously maintain my vehicles, dont abuse them, and keep them clean.
My thoughts are pretty simple on this topic in general…companies that start out and grow by excelling at producing a good product create their own decline/downfall when they stop thinking about making a good/better product and instead think about making more profits.
Why not let the divisions operate more semi independently? That’s what allowed GM to thrive in its earlier days. The divisions could be nimble and adaptable. They had independent engineering and design and sometimes manufacturing too. But the GM umbrella allowed these semi independent groups to share technical developments when it was advantageous. Internal consolidation and elimination of redundancy probably seemed like a good idea to the bean counters when they took control. But it ended up killing the organizational organism from the inside. They tried to make a healthy subject healthier and ended up turning it into a sick patient. And every time they thought they hadn’t done enough they kept doubling down and making the patient sicker. All the while the “cure” was actually toxic to the organization. The question is whether these were innocent mistakes or whether the U.S. auto industry tanked on purpose so that ultimately they could have off shore work forces laboring under authoritarian regimes??? Sounds nuts I know but one wonders… Wall Street will stop at nothing to hollow out America and destroy it from within. And that’s where the real corporate control rests. Not in the top management of each company in the real economy. They all have to dance to Wall Street’s tune while the whole country goes downhill in a heap of imaginary “productivity” and debt that is all too real. Oh well … there’s my rant for the day. 😅
You are absolutely spot on! Shame that so few people understand. Notice how nobody mentions the fact that the Japanese were heavily subsidized their government? Notice how nobody mentions the fact that in the mid 70s, the Japanese passed a series of regulations directly aimed at our cars without mentioning them by name, effectively freezing them out of their market, while our government did absolutely nothing in response?