Autoline Live interviews GM Global Product Dev, Tom Stephens

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Autoline had an hour plus long interview with GM's vice chairman of global product development, Tom Stephens. I'm sitting here doing homework and listening to the interview. The guy seems fairly sharp. The discussion has gone everywhere from shifts in demand to small cars, to cellulosic ethanol (and the failure of corn). It's almost a roundtable as a few folks offer up their opinion

Worth the listen if you have some time to kill. I kind of wish they talked to Bob Lutz because you never know what's going to come out of that guy's mouth, but this was interesting enough.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2202626

 

[adlep]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed
Autoline had an hour plus long interview with GM's vice chairman of global product development, Tom Stephens. I'm sitting here doing homework and listening to the interview. The guy seems fairly sharp. The discussion has gone everywhere from shifts in demand to small cars, to cellulosic ethanol (and the failure of corn). It's almost a roundtable as a few folks offer up their opinion

Worth the listen if you have some time to kill. I kind of wish they talked to Bob Lutz because you never know what's going to come out of that guy's mouth, but this was interesting enough.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2202626

"Sharp" guys making wrong decisions all the time. No point of listening. The entire upper management of GM should be fired after they took gov's money, this guy included.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

If you didn't bother listening to the interview just shut the fuck up.

Stephens did, for the most part, confirm what everybody thought about Buick and GMC. Buick is still around for their sales in China. GMC is around because of profitability gleened from a very specific customer base. I still find it strange that a typical GMC customer won't walk into a Chevy dealership, but by all accounts that is true.

There was a little more cheerleading than I had hoped, but it could have been worse. They seem to be gambling pretty heavily on "electrification". I'm not convinced it will take off as they hope, but time will tell.

It seems they finally get that people hate badge engineering. But that really hasn't been a problem for a while. With few exceptions like the G5/Cobalt, at least most of their cars on the same platform get unique exterior and interior designs.

The thing they still don't get is that multiple cars on the same platform, even with unique sheetmetal, only serves to dilute the brands. Just look at the Saturn Aura. When the current Malibu came out it took all momentum out of the Aura and killed it in the marketplace. It's just wasted effort unless the cars are drastically different. Ford sells as many Edge's as GM does the entire Lambda family. So what's the point? To keep dealerships happy?

Hopefully with less brands there will be less opportunity for product overlap but we'll see. Apparently though there will be an Epsilon II in every brand's showrooms. :roll: And rumour has it the next Escalade will be based on the next-gen Lambda. Way to build the standard of the world.