Buhbye Planets and Indians as Cars...

So, as part of the bailout plan GM released hoping that it wouldn't be forced into bankruptcy and get more loan money to keep them afloat, they've decided, in addition to try and sell Saab back to the swedes and take away every small-dicked mans fantasy of the Hummer off the showroom floors, to take Saturn and Pontiac (somewhat) off the scene.

To be honest, really....it feels like...and? Do they stop there? Do they really need two lines of Pick-ups and SUVs (Hello?!?! Who actually gives a shit about the difference in grilles between a GMC Sierra and a Chevrolet Silverado. Note, every other Pick-Up truck comes basically as one brand, unless it's something horrid like the Suzuki Equator).

And of all things My heart goes out to Saturn. It's basically General Motors Edsel, but allowed to be on life Support for 20 years. What seemed like a good concept in the mid 80s, in the reality of the 1991 launch didn't make sense, in reality Saturn's would have made more sense if they were rolled into either Oldsmobile or Pontiac at the time, and allowed to fail there, instead of creating a unique dealer network, with, a set of people that will be laid off over the next 2 years.

But of course. I've said it before that General Motors problems are not 20, or 30 years old. When you look at a 1964 Pontiac Tempest, Oldsmobile F-85/Cutlass, or Buick Special/Skylark they aren't all that different. At least they did hold unique V8 engines and spring rates, but, these differences would disappear in the next 15 years. Eventually little differences that made those cars drive differently melted into sameness...so all of the brands became pointless.

The root cause of the problem started almost 50 years ago. The problem isn't General Motors itself but it's more the product of 20th Century Capitalism, and the need for things to compete outside their niche. Note that American Motors failed when it tried to compete with The Big 3 offering cars equivalent to every Dodge, Pontiac and Mercury in the 1960s....and was only kept alive until Chrysler's takeover in 1987 by Jeep and rebadged Renaults (Renaults you can thank your LH with a failing transmission for).

It's hard for me as a die-hard car nut to see the death of Car Culture (trust me, hybrids just force Cars into the field of an more efficient appliance. A Prius is ugly. It doesn't inspire fantasy in a way even the most mundane economic offering did 50 years ago. A Prius is a toaster on wheels that doesn't occasionally burn your toast). But in the case of General Motors, it's that they wanted too much.....and you can't keep growing without nuturing what you have.

Think of it. As revoluntionary as most auto critics said the 1980 Chevrolet Citation was, what did it really do that a 1968 Audi 100 didn't do? besides offer a V6 option (that was substantially weaker, and notoriously asthmatic in comparison to Audi's Turbo options of the same vintage). When your Big Hope is no more technologically advanced than a car that had been on the market more than a decade ago, what are you doing? How are you innovating?

You're just selling death.