And then we found this great response in the alternative weekly The Hook in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a response to Courtney Stuart’s article on the future of the Saab, Hummer and Saturn brands in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. It’s from a reader named Rapunzel. Amazing that a chick named Rapunzel can sum up the problems with General Motors in just a few words:

I currently own a 1991 SAAB 9000 turbo with nee 350,000 miles and am more than willing to drive it anywhere without worries of problems and it remains a daily driver ….

What GM did to SAAB was short of criminal, they de-contented these cars to a HUGE degree and turned SAAB into marketing name with no substance. I got this message from the SAAB 95, which was based on a German Opel(GM) chassis with less content.

A friends owns a GM_Opel based 900 with the GM V6, the engine had to be replaced due to a timing belt failure at the dealer and this GM engine continues to be a problem to this day while the rest of the 900 has been fine. Then we had the SAAB 92, which was nothing more than a SAAB nameplate on a Subaru. When GM took over SAAB, they fired most of their highly experienced engineers and designers and installed GM ideology. This turned SAAB into a GM marketing shell of a company with no substance. You could not GIVE ME a GM based SAAB for free, these are horrid cars today. It is the same reason why GM is in such economic problems, they did to SAAB what they did to themselves which put them to the brink of going belly up.

We could add a few more things:

• The advertising for the cars looked at the aviation heritage of the brand. The reality was that the car brand had been divorced from the aviation brand; the advertising was simply a trick, and no one bought it.
• Some cars were no longer made in Sweden; they were essentially badge engineering. Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with badge engineering between a Buick and Pontiac. That is the tradition of GM. But Saab cars were so different, you couldn’t create a Saab just through styling.
• There was something unseemly about GM buying Saab in the first place. Frankly, the reason why they bought Saab was because they were embarrassed that upper middle class buyers took a skunner to General Motors cars. It was embarrassing, and Saab was the antidote to the wounded pride. Then, after it bought an admittedly ailing Saab, General Motors could destroy what Saab was. This would, in effect, prove to General Motors management that the Saab approach was wrong. Their incompetence and arrogance got in the way, and both companies were destroyed.
• The Saab key on center console was a unique aspect of owning the car. It is nice that they continued odd placement of the key, but it is not what makes a Saab a Saab. Doing things merely for appearance’s sake is a risky thing for a brand, especially when your brand is all about authenticity. It was all a trick. Cars don’t need tricks.
• We are fans of Bob Lutz, but he has been wrong on many things, including the fact that Saabs do not need to be made in Sweden.
• The Saab brand was about approach; what sort of car does a family need, and how do you make it durable, practical and solid? That was totally forgotten; they started marketing Saabs as fashion accessories and luxury items. The Saab was an anti-luxury car for people who hated conspicuous consumption.

What to do?

We haven’t a clue right now; perhaps the Saab can go the way of the Studebaker Avanti, and become a hyper-niche car brand kept alive as a trophy. Or maybe the Swedish government needs to step in.

We hope someone will at least pick up the pieces of the company and re-craft a new Saab in the spirit of the old.

A week or so ago, we happened upon a Business Week story about General Motors auctioning off some of its car collection. Some of these items were either flubs or concept cars, and not actually produced. All are fascinating, including a Harley Earl Buick. When we first read it, it didn’t bother us that much; after all GM is getting a big taxpayer bailout, and I am not sure I can defend taxpayer money going toward antique car maintenance.

And then I saw these photos of a new Porsche Museum in Germany (thanks to Klaus Holzapfel‘s Twitter blast). Take a look at the photos, both interior and exterior. The building is gorgeous, and shows the full history of the Porsche brand. Wow. Fascinating. And what a sales tool! Not only is it useful as an archive of what the company has done, but it is a way to show consumers what the company is all about NOW. It also builds tourism, educates children about the company, and gives the company a place to entertain. If you click on the Der Speigel article, it has a great video.

What is also interesting is that the museum is about a single BRAND; it has promotion written all over it. They have a bit on the Porsche website about the museum, saying that it is the “central repository where the Porsche tradition will be preserved and displayed.”

After seeing that Porsche building, I am now ticked off at GM, not that it matters to them. GM certainly doesn’t need a museum as grand as the Porsche Museum; they would be pilloried for it now. But they need to do more to bring the American public into their factories and heritage. Looking at the website of their Sterling Heights Heritage Center, they don’t even open it to the public, except for groups.

How you do a motor museum!

It is not difficult to open places to the public. There are a few steps. You take a key, unlock the door, greet guests warmly and then offer to walk them around and tell them about the cars. If there are not that many visitors (which is apparently the problem), you print up things called “FLIERS” and you take them to local visitor centers. You also have a person called an “ED-U-CA-TION DIREC-TOR” and she will call on schools to sell tours, ensure that tours relate to the curriculum, and greet school buses when they come. At the front, there is a thing called a “GIFT SHOP” where you put trinkets related to GM. On certain days, you offer a thing called a “FACTORY TOUR” where you charge certain sums of money to families who are interested in seeing a car being made. Safety is an issue, so you ask the guests to be on “BEST BEHAVIOR” and wear hardhats, and they always comply.

We did a bit of web searching, and also pulled out our handy book Company Museums, Industrial Museums and Industrial Tours by Doug Gelbert, published in 1994, in order to help us find where the auto museums are. GM used to offer tours in Flint at their plant at 902 East Hamilton Avenue. Thankfully, GM opens up its Bowling Green, Kentucky plant to the public, and they deserve praise for this. The plant makes Corvettes and Cadillac XLRs; they have a great site and description of the tour. Good job. Very good job. We will stop ragging on GM now.

Ford has a different perspective on the public; they offer tours of their crown jewel Rouge plant. Sadly, it is the ONLY automotive factory tour in Detroit.

Of course there are General Motors related sights in Flint and Detroit. The website VISITFLINT.com has a list, which includes the Alfred Sloan Museum (and Buick Gallery and Research Center) the Kettering Collection of Industrial History and the Walter P. Chrysler museum. They are all part of a Motor Cities tourism and education heritage area.

Question for BrandlandUSA Readers: What sorts of GM and Chrysler tours and exhibits might help promote the automakers and help with tourism in Michigan? What sorts of of collections are left?

According to Bloomberg, the phrase “Corinthian leather” had been made up by copy writers at Young & Rubicam, Adweek later reported. And he later promoted the LeBaron (essentially a reworked Plymouth Volare) and The New Yorker, which was a jazzed up K-Car. He was a terribly underestimated actor.

Seems like Bob Nardelli needs to find ANOTHER Ricardo Montalban to huckster some of the stuff on Chrysler lots.

Read our stories on Chrysler, including:

• GM, Ford and Chrysler Need Stripped Cars as the absence of low-priced base models is an opportunity Detroit is missing.
• Down the Road for Chrysler-Plymouth Dealers: The news on Chrysler isn’t good. The company announced yesterday that it was drastically scaling down its dealer network, only a few months after killing yet another product line.

Detroit might get a bailout. But that won’t be any help for American car dealers, who are on their own. What’s a dealer to do in order to not go the way of the Rambler? First, dealers need to get through this crisis. But after that, they need to rethink their whole business model. Just sitting back and selling cars with newspaper and TV ads won’t do it. You have to BRAND your dealership.

Frankly, car dealerships are boring. That is unfortunate, as a car is one of the most exciting things that people ever buy. You have to un-commoditize your approach, so that customers will want to pick you when they finally come back to buying cars. And you have to be an advocate for your car brand. While you don’t have to do like Harley Davidson and turn your dealership and showroom into a T-shirt and coffee shop, you can use some of those tricks.

Remember. The purpose is not to sell cars. The purpose is to make your potential customers want to buy a car. A few tips are here; email us and we can help you with customized research.

1. A low, fixed price. Make sure you have some rock-bottom priced new and used cars. I swear, most dealers present their pricing with all sorts of asterisks and such, even in a recession. You need a cheap car to get folks in the door, a car that is priced to sell. Frankly, no matter what the discount, if you have to start at $35K and work down, you still feel like you are getting gypped. You can get a Mercedes for that. GM is running Red Tag sale, and Ford and Chrysler are also running national sales programs. But some local dealers don’t seem to be on the plan, and many are not putting prices on their websites.
2. Cut newspaper advertising way back. As if you haven’t already? Run regular smaller ads, 1/4 pages, with exact cars and exact prices, without all the asterisks.
3. Add a vendor to your lot. Lowe’s home stores always do well with allowing a sausage vendor on site. It’s not the big income (though I am sure you can use it) but the potential for traffic. People will not stop at a dealership where there are no customers. They are scared of being pressured by salesmen.
4. Barter for radio time for charity. Ask local radio stations if they have extra time that they haven’t sold. If they do, perhaps you could do a one-time joint promotion to draw down inventory by paying the station (or charity) a fee for every car sold as a result of the program? Perhaps you can do it in cooperation with a charity. Another thought: Why not offer your showroom for a charity fund raiser?
5. Leasing. Today, leasing seems to be just about long-term leases for new cars, but what about the local, short-term leasing? Churches need emergency church vans. Folks that are moving need pickups. Families that are traveling on long trips sometimes need minivans. We realize leasing is a pain, but is there a way to make it work for you? Could you even buy a U-Haul, Ryder or Hertz franchise to add to your dealership?
6. Waiting Lists: Start a waiting list for next year’s models; advertise a “put me on the list” program. It seems that the Big Three will survive, at least in some form. So look at your 2009 models and see if there is anything that a person might look forward to, and start a “list” as a publicity stunt. For instance, there is a national Chevy Volt waiting list. Folks are waiting for the local waiting lists. Remember; Pan Am kept a “space travel” list as a publicity stunt, even though it had no rocket.
7. Parts and Self Service. It sounds like we want to turn the U.S.A. into Havana ’59 with this one but so what. Is there parts business you can steal from Auto Zone? If a person that is delaying a car purchase by a year, and can get the part from the dealer at around the same price as an auto parts store, then by all means they will go to the dealer. Think like Home Depot, and hold a Saturday class where you teach some aspect of car maintenance, like switching out a head lamp or wiper blade. Hold a class for kids; get dads to bring their sons to the dealership to look under hoods, and teach car parts. GET THE COMMUNITY IN THE DOOR.
8. Reach out to collectors. Why not hold rally where all the locals with your make come to show off their cars? Why not exhibit some historic 1930s or 1950s versions of your brand in the showroom? And do sell some branded T-shirts and such at the service counter. It might only be a bit of income, but it is free advertising for your dealership and brand.
9. Detail, details. Most dealers are doing this already, but make sure you have a car detail shop as part of your service operation. Advertise the service at an unbeatable price. Even if folks can’t afford to buy a new car, they can at least come by the dealer for a detail job. Give them one of those paper mats, and stick a brochure on the passenger seat.
10. Sell fewer cars. Back in the day, dealers didn’t carry so much inventory, and service was even more a part of the work of a dealership. I realize that dealers have been forced to carry too much inventory by automakers, but this practice has to stop; you need to sue if you can’t. I really a case study at a logistics class at the University of Richmond where the professor, who worked for Scott Paper, was forced to warehouse and hide inventory in the distribution system when sales targets weren’t met. Awful.
11. Put a human face on your dealership. The local car dealer was once the pillar of the community. While so many dealers are named after generic things, for the dealerships that still have family names, make sure that the family is visible. Do not re-brand yourself and eliminate those family names. People trust people they know, and all things being equal, will support a person over a generic company.

FIND BEST PRACTICES: For more information on uncovering the potential in your regional car dealership brand, talk to BrandlandUSA. We can help you with the research and insight to re-brand your dealership. Email us.

Buick unveiled its Invicta concept car earlier this year. And now, GM is advertising the car in major magazines, along with its model lineup of Buick Lacrosse, Enclave and Lucerne.

We wonder. Is it good? Is it Buick? Most importantly, we are wondering why are they advertising a car they can’t sell? Will GM be around long enough to make it?

Certainly, the new Lacrosse and Lucerne are handsome, and the Lucerne and Enclave have the trademark portholes, which give the cars Buick-ness. They have good reputations for quality. But they haven’t been selling, and many people don’t even know that Buick is still in business.

The Buick Invicta is a symptom of how GM has it all wrong, at least about 90 percent of the time. Looking at the car, we can see how GM just doesn’t understand how to win. In 1982, GM was selling 751,000 Buicks. Today, it’s down to less than 200,000 a year.

But don’t misunderstand, readers. We like Buick. Buick is good. Buick is America. It’s GM management we just don’t get.

Questions on the Invicta, and Buick in general.

1. Why the hoodlum look? Our sense is that the Invicta beltline is WAY too high, which gives it a look not too much more exciting than the overly gimmicky Dodge Magnum wagon. It looks mean, rather than handsome, and street, rather than establishment. We think the car is designed to satisfy the internal GM needs of some sort of cool club, and not any market considerations. This is a problem with all GM divisions. The car lines look like it was built for hoodlums.
   
2. Why is Tiger still spokesman? Tiger Woods has been the Buick spokesman since 1999. Since then, sales have continued to tank. Down, down, down, down, down, down. Certainly, it isn’t Tiger’s fault that the Terraza and Ranier were stupid cars. And it isn’t Tiger’s fault that GM dumped generations-old names like Century, LeSabre and Park Avenue in favor of new monikers like Lacrosse and Lucerne. All things being even, Tiger seems appropriate, and dealers like him. But we have to ask… is the real reason why Tiger is still connected with GM/Buick because the GM execs like to hang out with Tiger Woods and the PGA? (See the below video, of a star-struck Rick Wagoner.) Cash starved Buick doesn’t need a spokesman. It needs ads with models. A recent Buick promotion that had Tiger Woods doing De Kooning ink blot painting with clubs was just WEIRD. No wonder dealers average less than a half dozen cars per month. If you want to make Buick hip, don’t get a golfer. Get some crazy rocker who would not be your typical Buick guy. Tiger has WASP appeal, but you could get that just as easily with WASPy models.
3. Where is the station wagon? A Buick lineup needs a station wagon. For decades, Buick wagons were a staple of the American WASP household. Certainly, the Enclave is a sort of station wagon. But why not call it a station wagon? Why is it a crossover? Do 60-year-old men like to “crossover” on the way to Rotary and Lions club? Do spiffy moms taking kids to the club like to “cross over?” No, we think they would rather be driving a “station wagon” to the Metro North Kiss and Ride in Mamaroneck, thank you.
4. Where are the colors? Most of the colors of Buicks hover around shades of slate, red and black. They are boring as, and about same shades, as shi*. Where are the bright blues, the spiffy coppers, the punchy reds? That’s a Buick. Those are Buick colors.
5. Where’s the WASP appeal? In 2007, Buick used hip-hop music for their advertising. That was the low point. But lets get real. Buick sold millions of cars by parking Buicks in front of glamorous houses. Everyone aspires to a nice country mansion. No one but hoodlums aspires to hip hop. In your advertising, park the car in front of good looking houses.
6. Why don’t they care about selling cars? In a below video, GM execs decry all the Buick sales to fleets and rentals. Huh? Sell cars to Avis, please! What GM used to do was sell more of one cheaper car (the LeSabre) for rentals, and then have the Park Avenue as the most pricey Buick, not sold to fleets as much. In addition, selling cars for fleets are a great way for automakers to promote test drives. When you are in a situation where many believe your brand to be extinct, you want all the Avis rentals you can get.
8. Why aren’t they selling more models and doing more badge engineering? When the Buick brand was in its heyday, they were selling seven models. It is down to three, barely. Part of the success of GM was badge engineering, or making different cars out of the same chassis and backbone. The whole idea of GM was based on this; GM was all about economies of scale, and launching one platform and making a a number of different versions of it across all brands helped spread costs. Today, they have turned Buick into a niche luxury brand, and it won’t work.
9. Cut out the lingo. If you listen to the below video in its entirety, the GM execs use phrases like the “Channel” and a “blockbuster GM channel” and a “B/P/GMC channel.” Huh? First, overuse of lingo means you are too focused on your interior bureaucracy. Secondly, teaming up Buick dealers with Pontiac and GMC (hence B/P/GMC) is stupid. People who buy Buicks, traditionally, are not people who buy GMC cars and Pontiacs. In the old days, Buick dealers would be alone, and that was good. Dealers are way too big these days, anyway.
10. Don’t spend money to advertise concept cars. The last time automakers advertised concept cars was during World War II, when they were re-tooling for post war production, and had NO cars to sell. As they say in old retail, you SELL what’s on the shelves. But you don’t advertise cars you don’t have in the showrooms. It’s foolish, as it creates consumer frustration. We can see how GM is advertising the Volt. They are looking for a big, fat government handout, so we guess they would be smart to tell the U.S. government they might be making a car bureaucrats would like. In the case of advertising concept cars, it shows how little GM understands the purpose of a concept car. The whole purpose of a concept car is to release the photo of it, and have it covered by editors. You don’t waste advertising dollars to show it, because publications and blogs like to cover concept cars, and get free publicity there.
11. Where are the familiar models? We still think GM is missing the boat by not calling their current lineup by any familiar names including Century, Skylark and LeSabre. Read our story on it in BrandlandUSA called Why GM Models Don’t Sell Well.

What it points out quite obviously is the need for upstart Asian and Eastern European motor companies to have American brand names. In press reports for Hummer, it was reported that India’s Mahindra & Mahindra is interested in launching its own brand. Other Chinese auto companies need brands, as well. What brands are available? For the sport utility market, there is one forgotten brand name that is beloved. The brand is the International Harvester Scout. (Read about the history of the brand on Gary Billing’s excellent website. Click on the red Scout above.)

Why is it a great name to revive?

• It has a cult following, particularly with California surfers and folks who do conversions.
• Chuck Connors drove one in the original Flipper movie on the Florida Keys.
• It has no baggage with dealer contracts,
• It has roots with International Harvester, which has a big brand following.
• Other sub-brands of Harvester have been revived successfully, or lived on, including Farmall and Cub Cadet.

Read our Post

• 100 Dead Brands to Bring Back. It has a mention of International Harvester Scout
• Zombie Brands that Deserve a Second Life. It also mentions International Harvester Scout.
• MG Revival in China. A story on how the MG was reborn in China.