Keeping an old brand viable is sometimes no more difficult than packaging. Here, a specialized Willys Jeep Wrangler, which according to a Chrysler LLC release dates from 2004. Basically, it’s a Wrangler, but it comes specially packaged, with a Willys decal, and Army paint colors and tires.

The Willys package was about paint, styling and accessories, and nothing else. In fact, the Willys legacy is alive and well; the Kaiser Willys Auto Supply LLC keeps the brand rolling with parts that cater to the classic Jeep market. Chrysler might do well to purchase the family owned specialty parts company, and use their market knowledge as a laboratory for ideas for their prized Jeep brand.

Looking at this model makes me think of a fun mental exercise to think of what discontinued badges might have a market in a limited run or as concept cars. Selling them as a specialty item at existing dealers, might be a way to drum up interest in GM’s design legacy. Purists might find this as heresy, but so what. GM has been badge engineering for generations, essentially selling one car and then dressing it up differently for different markets. GM has done a bad, uninspired job of it, but that does not make it wrong to mess about with these brands.

I listened this morning on NPR as a factory worker discussed bad manufacturing practices of two decades ago, where Buick Regals and Chevy Monte Carlos were merged on the assembly lines to create bastard cars that were both Chevy and Buick. These were production errors that were ultimately fixed after the assembly line, but it pointed up how cars today are merely but facades of molded plastic and different labeling.

Pontiac might be the most obvious choice for this sort of stunt; how about a limited edition Camaro, rebadged as a Trans Am? Oldsmobile and Plymouth have been gone a long time, but there are specific models that have cult appeal, like the Mini did.

Chrysler’s Dodge brand has a youth swagger, which has no appeal to families. Why not a Plymouth version of a minivan? The Mitsubishi Eclipse could perhaps be re-badged as Plymouth Duster, which is revered as  a hipster car. Could a V8 Buick Lucerne be transformed into a special limited edition, high powered Olds Ninety Eight? Perhaps the Buick Enclave could be rebadged sold as the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.

GM is apparently doing something like this in 2011, by bringing back the Chevrolet Caprice as the brand name for a police car. It will be rear-wheel drive, and a monster.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Just off the headlines. The massive shutdown of dealers ordered by the Obama administration was a massive failure. Not that you couldn’t have noticed by just talking to some of the dealers themselves.

I recall running into a group of repair guys from Sarasota Chrysler-Plymouth, which is now Sarasota Suzuki Mitsubishi. This dealership was a successful one, situated right in the middle of hundreds of thousands of retirees. They could not understand why they were being shut down, when they were able to do the impossible, namely sell Chrysler cars. It was shut down, and consolidated with a Dodge/Jeep dealership. This was the same story, over and over again, where the government came down and shut down longstanding car dealerships.

The AP story says:

Treasury didn’t show why the cuts were “either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” said the audit by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $787 billion stimulus program known as TARP.

“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses,” investigators said.

Those decisions resulted in “potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” the report said.

Take a break and enjoy America’s industrial legacy.

And to all those companies that have shut down their factory tours because of some straw men like insurance or liability, shame on you. The reality? People love companies that open their doors to the public, but they HATE companies that do not engage with the public. Companies that run factory tours get to tell THEIR story, first hand, to new generations. When these great tours have been shut down, companies always blame the public or regulators or trial lawyers, but there are usually internal issues. Certainly, there are always issues with factory tours, but part of being in business is getting around them.

Here are the glorious survivors. There are, however, many more, including the BMW factory tour in South Carolina.Is it any surprise that BMW is breaking all sorts of sales records in the U.S.?

1. Union Pacific Museum: In Council Bluffs, Iowa is the museum of the railroad whose slogan is Building America. While volunteer money got the building, Union Pacific pays the expenses. God bless them for it. Other than trying to spot Mr. Berkshire Hathaway himself, The Union Pacific Museum is one of the great draws in the Omaha area. UP also runs steam excursion trains. It’s a brilliant promotion for the railroad, and a heck of a lot of fun. Remember other railroads. Why would you blow millions on advertising, when you get just as much bang with stuff like this?
2. John Deere Museum: In Moline, this is the Holy Grail of branding and Americana. A celebration of all things rural and American, with lots of technology in between. It’s really a whole set of attractions, from house to farm to corporate headquarters (Eero Saarinen) to sales. Lots of companies could learn from this extravaganza. Lots of museums can learn from it too; they have packaged an office building AND farm exhibit as one, making each piece part of a larger tour experience.
3. Kohler Design Center: A free guide to all the great bathroom fixtures of this American Icon. The museum has three stories of kitchen and bath products, designer rooms, luxury furniture and Kohler history. Each weekday morning, you can tour the actual factory.
4. Ford Rouge Factory Tour: The greatest car tour in the world. Visit in conjunction with The Henry Ford Museum. Grand. We just wish the other Ford factories could be preserved. Pity they waste that legacy.
5. Boeing Everett Tour: The grandaddy of aviation tours, the Everett Tour shows one of the greatest American achievements, Boeing. The full name is the Future of Flight Aviation Center and Tour. Northrop Grumman would do well to think of Boeing as it considers its Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock asset. Located just miles from Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Virginia Beach, it would tell the story of great ships under construction, and be a way to promote Northrop Grumman in the eyes of the public.
6. C.R. Smith Museum: All about American Airlines. Gerald Arpey, American CEO, couldn’t have said better, namely: “As a life-long aviation enthusiast, I’ve always had particular interest in commercial aviation history. To that end, the American Airlines C. R. Smith Museum is an entertaining source of relevant, fun-to-know information for me and my family. Like us, you and your family will find that the museum provides a unique insight not only into aviation’s storied past, but a stirring reflection of American’s proud history.”
7. McIlhenny Tabasco Visitor Center: The hottest thing in Louisiana, a tour of the sauce factory!
8. McDonald’s Museum: The McDonald’s Museum and Store #1 in Des Plaines, Illinois is mecca for those of us who still appreciate the McDonald’s hamburger. There is also a Big Mac Museum in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Did they save the McDonald’s in Downey, California? Not sure. But thankfully there is this one.
9. Corvette Factory: Bowling Green, Kentucky is the museum and factory tour of this automotive icon. Corvette really acts as if it is a “rich cousin” separate brand from Chevrolet, and that is the correct position for it to take. My question is why aren’t there more of these around the country. Where is the Jeep attraction? Where is Buick?
10. King Arthur Flour: The ancient Vermont flour company has a Baker’s Store that is a lesson in how to expand a brand. Every single unique consumer brand could have a store like this. No, not a copy of it, but a riff of it. If you are a car brand, you repair and display cars and sell car-related things. If you are food brand, you display that brand, and other like products. Oh, and sell some T-shirts and crap to the kids. School tours? You bet. They will be brand ambassadors forever.

Do readers have any favorite factory tours that ought to reappear, or that we have not listed? Love for readers to add in some suggestions.

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - I recently attended the NHRA Winter Nationals and noticed that the most popular body for those outrageous funny cars seemed to be Pontiac. So when I asked another spectator why, he simply said “they have the best aero-dynamics.” My horse sense told me this was likely to be true. Wow! I thought to myself.

GM phased out Pontiac last year and someone is going to transform it into an awesome performance brand unencumbered by the bureaucracy, labor issues and debt burden that GM imposed for all these years.  Just take a look at what BMW has done with the Mini. Or what Audi has done with the Bentley. Of course, for a brand to be worthy of a revival it must have cachet and a history. The brand needs to stand for something. People need to care about what it stands for. It needs to have a market. What does Pontiac have now that GM has dumped it?Although I have never owned a Pontiac, my dad owned several Pontiac convertibles and always told me he could afford a Cadillac, but he preferred the “sporty” image of a Pontiac. So now that the sun has set on Pontiac I ask myself what is its DNA? What is its history? What assets does Pontiac posses that would make it worthy of a brand revival? Could the brand be relevant again?

Well, its history dates back to 1893, when Edward M. Murphy established the Pontiac Buggy Company in Pontiac, Michigan. A city named for a famous Indian Chief of the Ottawa tribe. The company produced horse-drawn carriages. As it became clear that motor car sales were going to eclipse carriages, Murphy wisely started the Oakland Motor Car Company, an offshoot of the buggy company, in 1907. Two years later, General Motors acquired half of Oakland in an exchange of stock. But it wasn’t until 1926 when GM introduced the Pontiac brand at the New York auto show.

Dubbed the “Chief of the Sixes,” the car was powered by a six-cylinder engine. In 1941 Pontiac was the first auto company to offer the option of engine upgrades at which time its sales were a spectacular 330,000 vehicles. And although the Bonneville was a hit in the 1950s, Pontiac made its biggest impact on the auto world with the creation of the GTO option for the Tempest. By equipping the compact car with the powerful 389-cubic-inch V8 from the full-size car line, Pontiac created the first “muscle car.” The car became a cult classic when Ronny & the Daytonas topped the music charts with their tune “Little GTO.”

So a quick review of Pontiac’s legacy confirms a very sporty brand with high-performance DNA and a legendary list of model names like Streamliner, Catalina, Bonneville, Lemans, GTO, Gran Prix, Grand Am, Firebird, Trans Am, Fiero, SunBird and Solstice that each take on a personality all of their own.

So now what? GM has “shut it down.” Dealer stores stand empty. So it’s over, right?

No, I don’t think so. Why? Because the Pontiac brand lives in the minds and hearts of so many Americans that it will simply take the right team of entrepreneurs and auto enthusiasts to bring the Pontiac brand back into our lives. Roger Penske was considering the purchase of Saturn, but backed out. That’s good thing, because if he thinks about it, which I am hoping he will as a result of this article, Pontiac has way more potential to become America’s sporty performance brand and the new symbol of American “Engine-unity” and economic strength.

I would just love to see Art Center’s auto design students create Pontiac concept cars of the future. Of course the brand needs to incorporate new technology to comply with the ecological and economic realities of tomorrow. But this is true of any auto maker today.

Unlike a clean sheet of paper, Pontiac is a brand that is rich in heritage and deeply interwoven into American culture. It is a brand that has the potential of becoming the beacon of the 21^st Century American industry revival as a global technology leader and a symbol of “Happy Days.”

About the Author: Bart Young is a professional marketer and strategist and has guided a number of significant clients in attaining category leadership. His agency Young Company has been recognized as one of the top 25 business-to-business agencies in the United States. As the agency’s executive creative director, Bart has led his staff in winning over 100 awards of excellence in advertising, public relations and internet marketing. Major clients have included a number of Fortune 500 brands, including ARAMARK, Fluor Corporation, HP, Hughes, IBM, Northrop Grumman, TDK and Texas Instruments, as well as a number of major software, semiconductor and internet companies. www.youngcompany.com

Find out more

• We Love Pontiacs http://www.welovepontiacs.com/history.html
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Pontiac
• Autoweek http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1026582

• Proctor & Gamble just released its revived collection of Rochas, under the leadership of Marco Zanini. Proctor & Gamble shut down Rochas in 2006, and brought it back. The Wall Street Journal noted last week that its “nutty wide heels” and such targeted the exuberant woman who wanted to be a bit kooky.
• Last week, it appeared that the new Northrop Grumman CEO, Wes Bush, would have to decide on what to do about the tanker program that it is competing with Boeing to develop. As we all know, Grumman is using Airbus as its partner, but well-connected Boeing, initially the loser in the bids, was revived after much politics. We would submit, Mr. Bush, that the program’s failure to win a bid is partially a branding problem. Namely, it is thought of as a European bid. Why not revive the Grumman aviation name and develop planes under that brand, from your operation in Melbourne, Florida?
•  It’s good news for former GM dealers that were to be cut. The reality? Dealers make most of their money from repairs, not car sales, so why the government decided to force GM to close dealers made no sense. It was, as they say, crazy talk. This is one case where congressional meddling paid off. Back in the day, it was O.K. for dealers to have one brand, and sell a limited amount of cars. Then dealerships went to this crazy idea of volume. What other consumer good is helped by limiting the number of retailers who sell it? It made no sense.
• We hear it is terminal for the former Pan American World Airways WorldPort at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It is now Terminal 3; apparently it will come down, according to various and assorted blog reports. We hope that the Port Authority will follow historic preservation guidelines for the structure, including a Section 106 review of the assets, before it actually does the deed.

Thoughts?

My solution would be to offer any dealers that had lost a brand the opportunity to offer to affiliate under the banner of OK Used Cars.

OK Used Cars is the “Mad Men” brand of used cars; see the fellow in the ad at right.

This affiliation could be done for a small fee, and a small percentage of the take. GM would then keep these dealers within the GM fold, if you will, and as sales volume builds back up, they might even begin as dealers in a few years.

These dealers could sell used cars of any maker, but offer service with GM associations. The old slogan was “Buy with warranted confidence where you see the OK trade-mark.”

The OK Used Car brand was once associated with Chevy dealers. It still has some goodwill, and is even quite hip as you see it at right on an old ad from Life.

GM could have a new avenue, namely franchising used cars and repairs. It would not compete with Goodwrench, as that is something separate for all dealers.

Perhaps many Chevy dealers still have the OK signs up, which is fine. But the sign imagery could be used again. The only thing GM would have to do is to bring a set of standards to used cars, much like CarMax.

Looking ahead, GM has a couple big issues. For starters, Pontiac sold 30,000 odd cars last month, which leaves them with only about 15,000 left in new car inventory total before they slip quietly into automotive history. In fact, the ‘dead brands’ made up about 1 in of every 6 sales for GM last month. GM is so concerned about the orphaned customers of these brands, or ‘free agents’ if you will, they have recently set up a special task force to try and rustle those costumers back into the fold.

Even before the loss of the ‘dead brands’ themselves are felt on the monthly sales, GM’s market share has plunged from 24.7% to 19.5% in the last 12 months.

Seems to me that there is one way to keep the brands in the fold. Namely, keep making some cars with the badge Pontiac.

Thankfully, though, the brand will hang on with collector clubs. We guess the intellectual property department at GM will try all sorts of licensing stuff to keep Pontiac away from the Chinese.

One way the brand will be kept alive is in the popular media. A recent Daily Variety article listed some of the top Pontiacs that will live on in television, the movies and music. They include:

• GTO in the Beach Boys song
• Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit and K.I.T.T. in the original Knight Rider
• Firebird in James Garner’s The Rockford Files
• Pontiac Star Chief on I Love Lucy (Lucy, Fred, Ricky and Ethel road a Star Chief cross country)
• Pontiacs on Jimmy Kimmel Live
• Pontiac G6 on Oprah
• Pontiac Solstice on the original Transformers

One other way the brand will stay alive is through conversions. We found a fascinating conversion company, mentioned in Autoblog. It is Warren, Michigan-based ASC Creative Services. They started out putting sunroofs in cars, and now do all manner of conversions. They have gotten a flurry of press for their 2010 Pontiac Trans Am.

Here is their idea. ASC turns the new 2010 Camaro into their own version of a Pontiac Trans Am. I know this can be done because my brother in law has a Dodge Sprinter. He got a Mercedes grill for the thing and viola! He has a Mercedes. It’s funny for him, and customers love the joke. These cars, after all, were always made in the same factory, with just a bit of difference in trim.

That’s probably not a bad approach for General Motors with Pontiac. Contract with companies like ASC, either by license or directly,  to develop specialty cars under the Pontiac and Olds brand names. There is a market for these cars, albeit a small one. It does not make you much much money. But what the market does do is allow you to experiment with new car designs all the while bringing in a bit of profit from the exercise. While you will never make as much money as a full line division, you are keeping the brand fresh in case you want to bring it back. And remember, this has been done many times. Auto brands that died and came back include Mini, Abarth, Audi. Heck, even the ENTIRE U.S. car industry shut down production during World War II, and returned.

Also, if you actually make some cars, you have a good chance of keeping the intellectual property viable.

So put Pontiac on hiatus for a few years. Fix the old ones up. And allow folks like ASC to come up with some fun things in the interim.

ASC Creative Headquarters
6115 Thirteen Mile Road
Warren, MI  48092
586-446-4701

We found a sort of antidote. Its the web forum called Station Wagon Forums. It’s all about station wagons, and if you like station wagons, as opposed to crappy things like CROSSOVER this or SPORT that, then do look up the site.

By the way, below is a list of the wonderful station wagons I had growing up. This is a totally self indulgent list but this is the only place I get to put it. If readers are daring we ask them to put their list of station wagons up against mine!

1. Ford Country Squire, mid 1960s, I think realistically it was white with red interior but in my dreams it was wood grained
2. Opel Kadett wagon, green, purchased at GM Buick dealer
3. Plymouth Cricket wagon, 1971?, purchased at Wynne-Wright in Norfolk
4. Plymouth Volare Wagon, 1976, purchased at Self Motors, Farnham, Virginia. It was serviced and recalled way too many times at Green Gifford, Norfolk, Virginia. It was white with red interior.
5. Ford LTD Country Squire, 1971, yellow with wood grain, purchased used at Crowther Ford, Kilmarnock
6. Chevrolet Chevelle Station Wagon, green, mid 1960s, a gift from Uncle Charlie, paint scheme ruined when I washed it with Comet.

DETROIT - Not that I really like Pontiacs these days. They’ve not been interesting for a long time. But now, there are serious discussions that GM will announce that Pontiac will be shut down as a brand.

Frankly, it doesn’t make sense. If Pontiac sales stink, then so do Buick. And for that matter all of GM. The whole thing is ruined, and so if the government is going to spend the billions to save it, it needs to sell millions of cars to subsidize it. The killing off of Oldsmobile was a giant blow to General Motors, one that they never recovered from. While there are ways to preserve some of the brand goodwill of Saturn, Hummer and Saab, killing those brands off does not hurt GM. But killing off Pontiac will be an even more severe blow to GM than Pontiac.

It signals to consumers, who are confused, that their brand might be next. It signals that all of GM is going bye-bye.

These are the sales figures for so far in 2009, from that oh-so-brilliant website TheTruthAboutCars. I fail to see how killing off GMC and Pontiac will do anything but make GM into a company like Chrysler, with three brands, but with a ton more debt and legacy costs. Look at the figures. Does it make sense to kill off Pontiac? Or is it better to turn Pontiac into a sister brand of Buick and GMC?

                 2009 to date           2008

1. Chevrolet     94,704          164,564
2. Cadillac            8,209           17,453
3. GMC             19,086          38,422 
4. Pontiac      17,583           25,417
5. Buick               7,369           12,317
6. Saturn          7,333          18,146
7. Saab              1,265            2,962
   
8. Hummer         831            3,451

GM did not get in this mess overnight. This is about 20-plus years of bad management, poor marketing, poor decisions and GM being insulated and isolated. It is also due to GM feeling that since they were big and powerful, they could dictate to the public what we should buy. This is not so, as they have found out.

With that out of the way, I could name many things that went wrong. But instead, I will present the GM that I think would work in today’s market. In the 1960’s when GM was successful, brands were semi-independent and they had fewer models. GM made more with less.

Today, GM must globalize. There must be platform sharing across the world.

Chevrolet will not get every car and every platform. Let me make that clear up front. It does not matter what they are doing at GM Middle East, or at Holden.

• Buick will do a complete 360 in image. It will be a risky gamble.
• Oldsmobile will return.
• Pontiac will live with fewer models.
• This new GM will cover every segment of the market and this GM will reach different types of buyers with fewer models.

This GM will have:

• A beginning entry level mainstream” American” brand: Chevrolet
• A performance brand with an emphasis on affordable performance: Pontiac
• An “American” styled brand with an emphasis on technology and “American” styled luxury” Oldsmobile
• A entry to mid-level import fighter luxury brand: Buick
• A full on ultra luxury brand: Cadillac
• A luxury/ commercial truck brand: GMC

The dealerships will be interchangeable. There will be no stand alone Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac or GMC dealers. They will be housed at a Chevrolet dealer or next to a Cadillac showroom or together. No dealerships will be added. The metro areas will have fewer dealerships. Some will be consolidated. The rural dealerships will have the brands housed in the same dealer. This automatically cuts down on the number of dealers.
The platforms will be:

• Epsilon (fwd)
• Alpha/Zeta (rwd)
• trucks
• Lambda (fwd and awd)
• Theta
• Delta

Each platform can be lengthened, stretched, shortened or modified to ride according to market segment tastes. Each division will be marketed as they were in the past as a company owned by GM until the GM name can be rebuilt from its tarnished image. The Saturn approach will be used here. The dealership agreements will not be set up like Saturn. In order to get or maintain a GM franchise, certain criteria must be met.

A division roundup

Chevrolet: Mainstream and affordable entry level cars. The sports cars lead into Pontiac. Some of Saturn’s models will end up at Chevrolet. The Chevrolet dealers and everyone involved will be re-educated to a higher standard. No more thinking we are bottom feeders and sell cheap cars. The dealerships must be given the same respect as a Buick dealer, with less on the inside. Models include:

• Malibu (fwd sedan)
• Impala (fwd) (large sedan) ( no bench seat)
• Cruze
• Equinox
• Volt
• Beat/Spark
• Aveo(total overall make over)
• Silverado
• Tahoe
• Suburban
• Zafira
• Corvette
• Camaro
• Traverse

Pontiac: No bench seats or cheap interiors. The beginning of the use of higher materials. Think of it as a cheap BMW, like Bob Lutz said. If you cannot afford a performance Cadillac, this is the way to go.

• Bonneville: rwd upper/premium midsized (will fill all the mission of all the old B and H bodies)
• Firebird/Trans Am: More features and options than Camaro, with different styling.
• Grand Prix: rwd midsized coupe. Think BMW 6 Series and the old Grand Prix from the 1960’s and 1970’s. A GTO trim level can be spun off Grand Prix.

Oldsmobile: This brand will be the only GM brand with bench seats and the use of the next level of higher grade materials and features. This division is GM’s test bed for new technologies. It will be the one with the “traditional” American things like digital gauges and bench seats and velour fabrics. They will soak up the Lincoln Town Car buyers and Grand Marquis buyers, as Ford is leaving the segment. They will also take Chrysler 300 and Toyota Avalon buyers as well. Toronado and 98 will share instrumentation panels like they did in the 1970’s. I will not make the assumption Buick and hard line traditional Cadillac buyers will flock to Oldsmobile.

• 98: rwd or fwd. Will fill the mission of all the old C Bodies (98, DeVille, Park Avenue) with a contemporary twist. GM’s only traditional full-sized luxury sedan.
• Toronado: full-sized personal luxury coupe. Exactly what it was in 1966 and 1992.
• Cutlass/Ciera: The front wheel drive coupe. The only GM convertible other than sports cars will be here.

Toronado and Cutlass will offer bucket seats as an option. If you make Cutlass rwd, it would be GM’s only midsized rear drive mainstream sedan. If you make it fwd or rwd, it would be GM’s only midsized coupe. A Custom Cruiser wagon is a possibility as well, derived from GM’s Holden unit in Australia.

Buick: Entry to mid-level import fighter. Returning to its roots as the upscale professional’s car. Buick China will influence, not dictate, the American Buick. No Buicks will have bench seats, be over a 197 inches, have less content, or come in multiple trim levels. They will come loaded with options that can be added. The tag line: Isn’t it time you consider Buick. Model lineup includes:

• Insignia/Regal: Lexus ES fighter/Acura TL
• LaCrosse: As big as a Buick will get at a 197 inches. Acura RL Infiniti G35 clientele
• Saturn VUE/Opel Antara: Becomes Buick Rendevous. Loaded. Lead in to Enclave
• Holden Calais: A loaded rwd Buick aimed at the Lexus GS and Infiniti M Class.
• Astra: Entry level Buick for the budget conscious luxury buyer.

Cadillac: Ultra Luxury Brand. No excuses, no cuts, all out standard of the world luxury

• FTS: Rolls Royce Bentley Fighter at a cheaper price
• DTS: BMW 7 Series and Mercedes S Class and Audi A8 fighter
• CTS: BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E Class fighter. The CTS will have variations including coupe, sedan, and wagon.
• STS/ETC: Two and four-door ultra-luxury cars. Low volume. Think the big coupe at Mercedes and the four passenger Chinese SLS.
• BTS: BMW 3 Series fighter
• SRX: Cadillacs crossover.
• Escalade: Range Rover and other upper crust SUV’s.
• Converj: The luxury Volt

GMC: Luxury truck brand and commercial trucks. They will have to be brought up to a notch below Buick in terms of luxury and way ahead Chevrolet. Can be sold any any dealer except Chevrolet.

The new GM will have fewer cars. Chevrolet leads into Oldsmobile. Pontiac leads into Cadillac and both mean performance. Buick is aimed directly at the heart of the luxury car market and connects with GMC. You now have every segment covered by a fewer cars. Brand images include:

• Oldsmobile and Chevrolet will play up the “American” brand angle.
• Pontiac will play up the ” stylish affordable” performance.
• The Buick emblem will float with a black background. It will compare itself to the imports and leave many asking: “Was that a Buick?”
• Cadillac will go back to Cadillac Style that it used before, but emphasis will be on the new definition of luxury.

GM will look like a supermarket aisle, where you see Kellogg’s cereal brands. You know each Kellogg’s cereal caters to a certain segment, all variations on that brand. You know General Mills also has different cereal brands, too. They compete against Kellogg’s. The brands inside the company complement each other.

An investor group that includes private equity firm Black Oak Partners, LLC, working together with a number of Saturn retailers, announced today that it has approached General Motors about buying and operating the principal assets of Saturn Distribution Corporation as a diversified automobile distributor and retailer. SDC is the legal entity that franchises Saturn retailers.

A “new” Saturn Distribution Corporation would be built on Saturn’s customer-centric, low-hassle sales and service model. The company will leverage Saturn’s brand and source products from OEMs for distribution through Saturn’s existing network of approximately 440 US and Canadian retailers.

nSDC will initially source vehicles from GM, but expects over time to offer smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles from a range of manufacturers under its traditional business model of high customer service. It will retain a light vehicle design function that will help other manufacturers tailor their product offerings to meet Saturn’s brand style and customer needs. As envisioned, nSDC will engage in no direct manufacturing activities itself.

A press release said that the nSDC model could leverage the strengths of the existing Saturn retail network and distribution management team to pursue opportunities created by the changing structure of the global auto industry. nSDC’s role will be product sourcing, quality assurance, distribution, competitive analysis/positioning and national branding.

“As an independent retailer, the creation of nSDC will satisfy the primary interests of all existing stakeholders,” said John S. Pappanastos, a spokesperson for the investment group. “GM will be relieved of liabilities related to retailer franchise agreements and avoid the downstream financial fallout on their other brands that would result from closing Saturn retail facilities. Saturn retailers, on the other hand, will be provided with an exciting opportunity to secure a return on their existing investment. And taxpayers will be able to salvage more than 10,000 retail jobs that might otherwise be lost in a GM reorganization, as well as mitigate the potential for substantial local economic impact from Saturn retailer bankruptcies.”

We found the rather spectacular website Artificial Owl with some hauntingly beautiful photos of Detroit’s empty Union Station. The site is all about photos of abandoned places.

I cannot help but think of the parallels between Detroit’s waste of this great building, and the waste that is the American automobile industry. It is telling that this happened at exactly the same time as General Motors was running itself into the ground, and wasting car brands like Buick, Chevrolet and Pontiac.

If Detroit is to survive, it better care of these assets as now it has little else. A great video of the station is here on YouTube. were we see what it looked like as late as the 1980s. It was renovated partially, and then allowed to rot.

But that is the story of the inept leadership of the city of Detroit. Pity. It is pretty close to criminal.

By the way, if you like sites like Artificial Owl, you will certainly like the blog Labelscar; that site that documents dead malls and dying retailers.

IRVINE, Calif. – BMW is the coolest car brand in America. Or so says Kelley Blue Book, which has just released current winners of their 2009 Brand Image Awards.

And Cadillac? Boy do Americans like the interiors.

The Brand Image Awards are presented to the top brands in 10 categories, and are based on consumer automotive perception data from Kelley Blue Book Market Research’s Brand Watch study. Brand Watch is an online brand perception tracking study on Kelley Blue Book’s website, www.kbb.com.

The winners are:

• Best Value Brand: Toyota
• Coolest Brand: BMW
• Most Family-Friendly Brand: Toyota
• Most Rugged Truck Brand: Ford
• Best Performance Brand: BMW
• Best Comfort Brand: Cadillac
• Best Exterior Design Brand – Luxury: BMW
• Best Exterior Design Brand – Non-Luxury: Nissan
• Best Interior Design Brand: Cadillac
• Best Prestige Brand: Mercedes-Benz

• We liked Ford when it made Fordson Tractors, Tri-Motors and Philco Televisions.
• We liked General Motors when it made Electro-Motive engines and Frigidaire appliances.
• We liked Chrysler when it made Chrysler sailboats (long live the Buccaneer) and Chrysler Marine engines. We liked Chrysler when it sold engines for Eero Saarinen’s Mobile Lounges at Dulles.

We still like all these companies, but they were so much more interesting and adaptable when they were in different lines of business.
All companies are more interesting when they are diverse. All companies are more adaptable when they are diverse.

While it is awful to see a conglomerate with unrelated parts (that is what is pitiful about some of the GE ventures of the 1980s and 1990s), it is good to see industrial companies make things that relate, sort of, to what they do mostly. It keeps them flexible. So when a downturn comes, they don’t get stuck.

That being said, it is GREAT that Electo-Motive and Frigidaire are no longer with GM. At least they weren’t tainted with the mess.