GM's disaster CEO, Roger Smith, finally kicked bucket

The guy probably most responsible for the bad business decisions that
tanked GM as a world leader in the auto business has died...Roger
Smith, target of Michael Moore's widely viewed documentary, "Roger &
Me," died after an "unspecified illness" near Detroit (probably Royal
Oak; GM's press hacks wouldn't say) at 82.

Smith was GM's first "bean counter" CEO, not a car guy, not an
engineer, and finished the long, hard attempt by the headquarters
accounting wing of GM to take over all of GM's business decisions, in
contradiction to the "loose federation" business model put in place by
Al Sloan in the '30s, which made GM an inventive and successful
powerhouse.

Among Smith's disasters were Saturn, which turned out to be somewhat
of a fraud to the car buying public, which was promised "no hassle, no
haggle" dealerships, which turned out to simply be an advertising
hoax. Instead, GM wasted the opportunity to truly remake the "GM
culture" but simply extending it to yet another division building and
selling mediocre designs. Meanwhile, while keeping Saturn a separate
division, Smith succeeded in destroying the car, truck and bus
division that made GM what it was by "badge engineering" corporate
headquarters designs and placing all former "division" functions into
a single, accounting-controlled "manufacturing department," with the
exception of Cadillac. Cadillac was still trimmed excessively, which
hampered their efforts to compete with the Euros, the Japanese and
with Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division. The public got wind of this
really quickly, and, despite accolades today from the auto cognoscenti
in Detroit, Smith saw GM's market share in the US fall from 46% to 32%
under his watch. This wasn't in spite of Smith's efforts, it was
directly because of them. Bean counters don't build cars...car guys
do, and Smith was anything other than a car guy. GM does now have a
couple of "car guys" in top management (Bob Lutz from Iacocca's
Chrysler comes to mind) but they're kept in check by the accounting
honchos and aren't allowed to innovate.

Under Smith, all GM cars were simply "GM this or that," with no brand
individuality in engineering or model offerings. Smith directed the
newly formed "manufacturing department" to use the cheapest possible
drive train components, such as using the inferior Chevy small block
V8 and Chevette HydraMatic even in Cadillac lines, and the tired Buick
V6 for almost everything else. Chevrolet, the lowest regarded of all
GM divisions for decades, was allowed to keep its own engines and
transmissions, while superior power train products from Olds, Buick,
Detroit Gear, Saginaw and Delco were trashed to cut costs.

Wagoner, the current flailing GM CEO, praised Smith for 'preparing GM
for the global competition it now faces.' Pretty words, but too bad
they're a lie. The truth is that Smith started the long, steep
decline of GM that they're suffering today. Continuing the slaughter,
Smith descendents Stempel and Wagoner stripped GM of GM Truck and
Coach, all car divisions, Delco-Remy, AC Spark Plug, Electro-Motive
Division, Detroit (Cleveland) Diesel, Allison Division, Frigidaire
Division and practically everything of value that GM had since the
1920s. Wagoner's hardly any better; since he took over from Stempel,
GM's market share has sunk now to an all-time low of 24%, with
promised hot models never making it to market, instead content to try
to sell rebadged Aussie Holdens as "GTOs" and similar cheesy GM
rebadge gaffes.

Nice going, Roger...hope you'd enjoy Honda, Nissan and Toyota
posthumously eating your lunch...and breakfast...and dinner...and
desserts. You deserve it, as well as having a thousand UAW members
piss on your grave, not to mention the populations of the cities of
Flint, Lansing and half the state of Michigan.

 

The irony about "Roger and Me" was Michael Moore eventually got to sit
down with Roger and talk. However he felt that this wouldn't work with
the movie so he left that part out of it.

 

The operative word in that sentence being "eventually."

Smith finally broke down and agreed to a sit-down with Moore AFTER
filming was wrapped and the picture was already through post
production. He had his chance, but decided to do a Jack Welch and
stonewall. He got what he deserved. The wreckage that is GM now is
mostly due to bad decisions he made, continued as they were by Stempel
and Wagoner.

Smith's two biggest boners: shedding the "Sloan model" and making GM
just another bean-counter-run money grubbing American corporation. All
of the inventiveness, creativity and drive to excel that marked GM's
rise to #1 all during the Sloan era was gone. The second was Saturn,
which COULD have been a good thing, but wound up just being part of
Smith's failed "southern strategy" to move all GM manufacturing out of
Michigan, the Midwest and California and into backward southern
states, which are reliably anti-labor and whose desperate state and
local governments were forking over billions in tax breaks.

Saturn's designs were mediocre at best (the plastic skin idea was
robbed from Pontiac, everything else was also-ran GM designs not used
by the other "divisions") and, although quality of assembly was higher
than other GM products, it still couldn't match that of the Japanese
competitors. The whole "no-hassle dealer" idea turned out to just be
yet another GM advertising gimmick. Lee Iacocca even questions the
wisdom of hanging onto Smith's failed idea, as he also questions the
validity of Ford's Mercury line, which now is just a "dress-up" option
for the Ford line.

Ford, however, is coming out with some pretty darned good new
products, while GM's got their design transmission stuck in permanent
reverse. The real sleeper was the 500, which got a Fusion grill and
was rebadged back to Taurus...a VERY nice car. Chrysler, now a toy
for private equity hacks to play with, will probably tank soon due to
mismanagement, since La Sorda probably won't put up with the new
owners for very long if they don't behave. Remember, it was Ford's
going public and AWAY from total Ford family control in 1956 that
saved the company, even if drunkard King Henry II didn't necessarily
see it that way. The reverse could be very true of Cerberus' grabbing
of Chrysler. Lack of oversight and accountability always breeds bad
management, no matter what the industry.

 

Well, yeah. That's a standard part of Moore's "documentaries".

 

It is interesting how bean counters can ruin companies.

Around 1980 John Sculley came to Apple and eventually fired Steve Jobs
and nearly ruined the company.

Similarly in IBM Opel and Akers took the company on a spiraling slope
downwards.

It is like they say about Bush that he is a master of creating small
companies.
He starts with big companies and makes them small.

 

the whole movie was based on the crap that asshole pulled and gm still
uses today to **** people who work for them

 

That's a great example of a non-sequitur. Idiot.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

And that's a surprise? MM never lets reality get in his way.