GM - Made in China

[MonaroSS]

GM - Made in China

This was posted by new member higgledy (welcome) as their No 1. post in another thread, but it deserves it's own thread. The article is long but a really good read and I suggest everyone take the time to read it through.

Full Article Here at Fastcompany.com:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...-in-china.html

Originally Posted by fastcompany.com

The (LaCrosse) redesign was pitch perfect, so well targeted that the Chinese LaCrosse is on track to sell nearly 110,000 units in its second year in production. (In the United States, the LaCrosse isn't expected to approach the 100,000-unit mark, ever.) Now, with that success still fresh, Qiu and the China design team face a critical test. They will design the next Buick LaCrosse, due out at the end of the decade, for the entire world.

Originally Posted by fastcompany.com

Today, PATAC's design team is more than 100 people--all of them Chinese save for one Canadian, Mike Stapleton, who joined 18 months ago. And it's a key player in a corporate design strategy that relies on recruiting and connecting talent from all around the world. Beginning six years ago, "we said, 'Wait a minute, the world is bigger than Detroit. It's bigger than North America,' and that there are some pretty cool things to learn from the rest of the world and the rest of GM," says Anne Asensio, GM's executive director of advanced design. "Going global wasn't about pushing our practices on others, but going beyond that to realize that, for example, someone can do something very cool in GM Europe and the people at Holden in Australia can learn from it and use it."

[paul8488]

It's sad that China can build a better Buick than America. GM got lazy with Buick... that's why we have the nice but uncompetitive and tired Lacrosse and Lucerne and China has their modern and popular Lacrosse. Many don't like the idea of the Chinese designing the next Buick for the world... but if it ends up being better than what is coming out of Detroit, why not?

I'm not saying that Detroit CAN'T design the best Buick... but up until now GM hasn't put the resources behind what is essential to the Buick brand... proper sedans!

[powervette]

Originally Posted by paul8488

It's sad that China can build a better Buick...

Originally Posted by paul8488

I'm not saying that Detroit CAN'T design the best Buick...

[dindak]

They should get the Enclave group to design it!

That said, the new car will be more of a world car with sales in China likely greater than sale in North America.

[paul8488]

Originally Posted by dindak

They should get the Enclave group to design it!

I agree. While one can't dwell on the past too much, the Enclave is what the Lucerne and Lacrosse should have been. Buick North America is capable of some great work... GM just has to free them up and support them more.

[casket_demon]

China will soon be our new masters.

[gwwyjjliu]

The whole point of the article is that competition between Chinese and North American teams can push the design to a much higher level, "to the highest common denominator instead of the lowest," as the article stated.

In GM's glory years (50's and 60's in my opinion) competition between divisions to one-up each other brought out some of the most distinctive and memorable car designs in history. Nowadays, instead of Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac studios competing against each other, you have design teams from the US, China, Korea, Germany, Australia, and Brazil each pushing each other to the highest levels of design excellence. This can only be a good thing.

[petervegas]

Originally Posted by gwwyjjliu

The whole point of the article is that competition between Chinese and North American teams can push the design to a much higher level, "to the highest common denominator instead of the lowest," as the article stated.

In GM's glory years (50's and 60's in my opinion) competition between divisions to one-up each other brought out some of the most distinctive and memorable car designs in history. Nowadays, instead of Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac studios competing against each other, you have design teams from the US, China, Korea, Germany, Australia, and Brazil each pushing each other to the highest levels of design excellence. This can only be a good thing.

Great insight and very well put!

[CobaltSScrazy]

Originally Posted by dindak

They should get the Enclave group to design it!

That said, the new car will be more of a world car with sales in China likely greater than sale in North America.

With these group design centers, the same programs design the same types of products. THe truck group does the GMT900's, the epsilon group will always do epsilons, etc.

CobaltlSScrazy

[T-Type]

Originally Posted by gwwyjjliu

The whole point of the article is that competition between Chinese and North American teams can push the design to a much higher level, "to the highest common denominator instead of the lowest," as the article stated.

In GM's glory years (50's and 60's in my opinion) competition between divisions to one-up each other brought out some of the most distinctive and memorable car designs in history. Nowadays, instead of Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac studios competing against each other, you have design teams from the US, China, Korea, Germany, Australia, and Brazil each pushing each other to the highest levels of design excellence. This can only be a good thing.

Excellent post gwwyjjliu! You make a great point. The old divisional rivalry is long gone as each division can no longer act as a separate business unit. This rivalry between different geographic locations can bring back the spirit of what happened in the glory days when each division tried to out-do the other.

[momo67]

China is my daddy

[MonaroSS]

Originally Posted by casket_demon

China will soon be our new masters.

No, they will soon be our new America.

And the rest of us are already used to one of those.

But we still preserve our own identitiy, you just have to try harder.

[Al465]

Originally Posted by paul8488

It's sad that China can build a better Buick than America. GM got lazy with Buick... that's why we have the nice but uncompetitive and tired Lacrosse and Lucerne and China has their modern and popular Lacrosse. Many don't like the idea of the Chinese designing the next Buick for the world... but if it ends up being better than what is coming out of Detroit, why not?

I'm not saying that Detroit CAN'T design the best Buick... but up until now GM hasn't put the resources behind what is essential to the Buick brand... proper sedans!

I hate responses like this. Automatically you give the Chinese credit of completely designing this car by themselves. If it were not for the Americans, China would still be designing junk cars. Those Chinese auto plants are loaded with American engineers. I hate this kind of criticism! What's going to bring this country down are Americans criticizing other American and give credit to their competitors. BTW, I know how the system works because I'm a retired GM engineer.

[bcjohnso99]

Anne Asensio, GM's executive director of advanced design. "Going global wasn't about pushing our practices on others, but going beyond that to realize that, for example, someone can do something very cool in GM Europe and the people at Holden in Australia can learn from it and use it."

Did that statement really come from an American company? I think GM has officially become a global company.

Maybe Mrs Asensio and some other GM managers like her should hang out on Capital Hill - apparently there are some foreign policy people who could benefit from a little influencing!

[paul8488]

Originally Posted by Al465

I hate responses like this. Automatically you give the Chinese credit of completely designing this car by themselves. If it were not for the Americans, China would still be designing junk cars. Those Chinese auto plants are loaded with American engineers. I hate this kind of criticism! What's going to bring this country down are Americans criticizing other American and give credit to their competitors. BTW, I know how the system works because I'm a retired GM engineer.

The Lacrosse and Lucerne came out of an American design studio... the Chinese Lacrosse out of a Chinese one, apparently. I'm not bashing American designers... I said that the Enclave is awesome... but I said instead that GM hasn't dedicated the resources or freed the engineers up to allow them to do this with a North American Buick sedan. I'm not spouting off saying American engineers suck... I don't feel that way at all... but I just plain old think it's sad that GM's current structure (or at least up until very recently) is such that the best Buick sedan in ages comes from China.

Also, while I don't pretend to really know anything about how the system really works (not being a smart-@ss... I really don't) the article states:

PATAC's design team is more than 100 people--all of them Chinese save for one Canadian...

Again, not calling into doubt the talent of American designers... but it's clearly being wasted, or at least has been up until very recently.