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2004 New York Auto Show: GM
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| In Charge of GM’s Small Car Comeback |
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| Updated |
Mar 17, 2005 19:41:50 |
| Rating |
 113 ( 13 +11.5% ) | | Author | Kate McLeod |
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Description:
If there's one thing General Motors hasn't been good at for decades, it's small cars. Go through the list: the controversial Corvair, the troubled Vega, the behind-the-times Chevette and the Cavalier, which actually sells well but only with a $3,000 rebate.
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It's up to Lori Queen to change that with a new small car called the Cobalt, coming out in the fall of next year.
Queen is the Vehicle Line Executive (VLE) for small cars at General Motors. That VLE title means boss. The buck stops at Queen on all matters from engines and transmissions to interior refinements to overall design to sales and marketing. That's her job and top-executive eyes are trained on her these days. GM needs a winning small car and they all know it. Toyota and Honda have captured the market with their Corollas and Civics. Even Ford is credited with building a much better small car with its Focus.
Why does GM do so poorly with small cars? "If you look at what drove purchases in America," says Queen, "it wasn't small cars. It wasn't until the Japanese came on shore that things turned around. GM downsized cars in the Eighties and got a horrible reaction from the public."
There's also history. Most GM executives grew up in big cars. Bigger was always better. Small was cheap and foreign.
What about Saturn? That was GM's effort to change. But there were problems. Saturn belonged to the prior management and the new executives just didn't like the old leader. They also didn't like Saturn because it was set up as an independent operation. And the Saturn operation was expensive with new factories, a plastic body and a distinct engine.
Then there was a plan to build an all-new Cavalier just a few years ago, but it never happened. GM needed to catch up with the booming truck market first.
"Our priority was to cover the profitable mainstream. No one would fault us for that. We were doing a 60:40 mix and we thought that was phenomenal. We just didn't have the resources to go to a 50:50 mix. We needed the infrastructure and time commitment to strengthen our truck line and we were constrained by capacity and the capital resources necessary to strengthen our bread and butter."
When Queen was brought in as VLE two years ago, GM still did not have an approved small car program. She was charged with making a business case for the program and getting it approved.
That means that she had to use what we used to call a platform, now called "architecture" from Europe called the Epsilon Delta architecture. That's because GM had decided that using common platforms (architecture) around the world to hold down costs in the now ultra-competitive car world, was essential to its survival.
To create that architecture GM went around the world gathering input from Brazil, Asia and Europe. Once they had a satisfactory plan for the
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platform, she oversaw the reconstruction of the assembly plant car lines and new equipment. "It's a huge financial commitment and you've got to know that everything works." How costly? She didn't say, but when you figure the factory changes and the tooling, $40 billion might be a reasonable number.
And this time the VLE has had unprecedented access to top people at GM including Robert Lutz, the product-loving Vice Chairman, and Mark Hogan, Group Vice President, Advanced Vehicle Development and Gary Cowger, President, General Motors North America and Jim Queen, Vice President, Chief Engineer for GM and her husband. "GM has never given a VLE this kind of direct line to top executives before for any program. But it was important to get up-front commitments in order to make the program successful."
She sees parallels between small trucks and small cars, which helped her shape the program. Both are entry-level purchases and customers at that level want utility more than profit-enhancing extras. The cost pressures at this low entry point are enormous making it hard to turn a profit.
Does that explain away the travesty of the first car off the line, the 2003 Saturn Ion? Queen assures that the 2004 Ion will be substantially better than the 2003. GM has improved the powertrain performance, electric power steering, changed all the grains, color schemes and fabrics. The complete overhaul makes one wonder how the '03 ever got approvals through the system in the first place.
These new cars will be powered by GM's Ecotec engine and Powertrain Division is developing a 175 horsepower version and a 205 horsepower version for the Ion Red Line and a similar super-charged version for the Cobalt.
Queen knows that she faces blinding skepticism. "Look, you hate my cars," she finally says. "I have to convince you that I have great cars coming." The marketplace is now full of established great small cars. The Corolla, the Focus and the Civic all have loyal happy owners.
"I have to blow you away," says Queen. We see a video off the record of coming attractions. That new Cobalt, due in a year, is looking swell. Queen breaks security and shows a video of the new Cobalt. But a conference room video doesn't tell enough of a story to predict whether or not Queen will be successful in blowing us away. She is, at least, a hard-line realist who doesn't fudge around about what she's up against. That, in itself, bodes well. Apparently, Bob Lutz likes what she's done. "We got Bob into a prototype. His comments compared the Cobalt and the Honda Civic and implied that the Cobalt, by comparison, was the far better car.
One of the big moves in small cars now is the high mileage E hybrid. There's no sign of a hybrid Cobalt from General Motors, but there will be a Saturn hybrid. Toyota has its 50-mph Prius hybrid on the road for two years. Is GM thinking about a hybrid Cobalt? "We had to get the small car right first. It would not have made any sense to work on a hybrid without getting the gas engine car out into the marketplace first, but GM is very serious about hybrids," says Queen.
She'll also be working on the HRT GM heritage-based crossover, a baby Suburban that looks good. And, when asked if she's going to get the Solstice, a little roadster sports car being developed for Pontiac, she says, "If its small and cool, I'm doing it." |
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