http://www.autonews.com/article/20170219/OEM/302209940/opel-was-once-the-little-engine-that-could
February 19, 2017 @ 12:01 am
Richard Johnson
In 1919, General Motors President Billy Durant decided his rapidly growing company needed a foothold in Europe. He sent a team of lieutenants that included Walter Chrysler, Charles Kettering and Alfred P. Sloan to Paris to negotiate the acquisition of Citroen.
The talks fell through, but a decade later, Sloan, who was then running GM, returned to Europe in pursuit of the German company Adam Opel.
That deal got done, and for nearly 90 years, GM has stuck with Opel through thick and thin. Indeed, there has been a lot of thin, including World War II. But GM's ownership of Opel was one of those stable and unchanging docking points in the world that I took for granted. Now GM is sorting out the details of a probable sale of its European operations to PSA Peugeot Citroen.
Gee, great engineering turning things around for an automaker/brand, instead of relying on number-crunchers?
'Tis a pity that the wunderkinds in Smith and Wagoner didn't (or couldn't) do more to turn things around for GM during their respective tenures - while there were improvements like the most sweeping re-organization of a structure that had been in place since the 1920s and better manufacturing efficiency and quality - many of the problems that plagued GM during the 1970s-80s continued to exist.
Wagoner, in particular, should have enacted more drastic changes.
February 19, 2017 @ 12:01 am
Richard Johnson
In 1919, General Motors President Billy Durant decided his rapidly growing company needed a foothold in Europe. He sent a team of lieutenants that included Walter Chrysler, Charles Kettering and Alfred P. Sloan to Paris to negotiate the acquisition of Citroen.
The talks fell through, but a decade later, Sloan, who was then running GM, returned to Europe in pursuit of the German company Adam Opel.
That deal got done, and for nearly 90 years, GM has stuck with Opel through thick and thin. Indeed, there has been a lot of thin, including World War II. But GM's ownership of Opel was one of those stable and unchanging docking points in the world that I took for granted. Now GM is sorting out the details of a probable sale of its European operations to PSA Peugeot Citroen.
Gee, great engineering turning things around for an automaker/brand, instead of relying on number-crunchers?
'Tis a pity that the wunderkinds in Smith and Wagoner didn't (or couldn't) do more to turn things around for GM during their respective tenures - while there were improvements like the most sweeping re-organization of a structure that had been in place since the 1920s and better manufacturing efficiency and quality - many of the problems that plagued GM during the 1970s-80s continued to exist.
Wagoner, in particular, should have enacted more drastic changes.