By Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica Editor

(August 2009) I read comment after comment regarding the auto industry and GM specifically.

On the mass media online sites I see lots of anger, people who don’t understand the big picture, and a lot of vulgarity from folks who seem to like to bastardize the English language. There are some insightful people on the web such as those commenting about the “re-invented” GM TV spot, at Ad Age. But they too, for the most part, tend to look at things with a jaundice eye.

Some though get it as they worry about the real change that needs to be take place at GM and like those I worry as well. My gut feeling after being a faithful observer of the auto industry for more than 40-years is not good. One commenter said it best…”I agree with most of what's been written already but here's the thing that really gets me...an ad about "re-invention" from the General? You've got the same management (minus a few), the same corporate culture, the same marketing partners, the same Detroit centricity and they want us to believe that they're re-inventing themselves!? I agree with the intent of the advertising (signal a new beginning) but please offer us some reasons to believe that GM might be bringing in the outside influences (new management, new agencies, new influences) capable of leading real re-invention. Right now it feels like the only new thinking is going to come from the government and that is unsettling at best.” Cameron McNaughton TreeFarm Partners Inc.

McNaughton really has some sharp insight to the problems of GM with doubts, including my own, to the solutions that the spot ad professes. I really have trouble believing that the “New GM” will be very much better than the old GM. Yes, they will be smaller and with slightly less debt. But will there be real gut wrenching change?

Can they possibly become more profitable than ever before? That’s what they’ll need to do to service the company’s debt. How about the $84-billion in pension liability? Will the sunset clauses in the UAW and CAW contracts come back to haunt them, as even with a little profit the demands of the Unions could be as hurtful as ever? Will they ever be profitable enough for us taxpayers to recoup our $50-billion investment? Why can’t GM recognize that the problems it faces don’t necessarily come from external sources?

Sure, great products will help. The ingrained arrogance and corporate culture that continues to exist will not. After reading GM’s open letter (ad) in the morning paper professing change I’m reminded of the file cabinet full of releases collected over the last 40-years of pronouncements of change by auto industry executives that turned out to be simply lip service. My gut feeling like McNaughton’s is that necessary change needed by GM has yet to show itself. Where’s the mea culpa?