In the immortal words of Artie Johnson, this thread is "veeeery interesting"...
A quote from this one, a snipit from that one...pretty soon you can have a very compelling case, BOTH sides of the fence.
Some sad history, from Pontiac, on the same platform TWO different times:
MY 1982, Pontiac is pleased as punch to intro the all-new "drive Accord back to J-A-pan" J2000...tada! Got great fuel economy, but many of the purported "horses" were left in the stable, what with its 2-something final gear ratio and flooding problems if you put your foot with a foot of the accelerator on a cold morning. I sat through an excrutiating ass-whooping from the "suits" one day in January/'82 who told us we ordered them wrong (too many automatics, not enough overpriced handling packages, yadayada), until I stood up and told 'em I, for one, would not sell the car PERIOD until they fixed the cold-start/flooding/cough-n-sput problem and put some gear in the car so it would pull itself down the road!............[Silence ensued...]. After the meeting, I was told to shut my mouth, or else... Within weeks, a TSB was issued to install new platinum-tipped plugs (first I heard of them), reflash the 'puter and, from now on, 3-something gears would be standard equipment... Guess what? The missing horses were found, the car started and ran as it should, and sales picked up markedly. Pontiac's follow-up?
MY 1983, "we'll call it the 2000"...
MY 1984, "we'll call it the 2000 Sunbird"...
MY 1985, "we'll call it the Sunbird"...
So much for BRAND IDENTITY...
Flash forward to...
MY 2005, Pontiac intro's a new Canadian-only version of the "all-new" Cobalt, called the Pursuit...styled differently, a lil more content at virtually the same price. Sales, as for the Sunfire previously, are close-to-equal Cobalt, nationally, with much less Fleet...
MY 2006 (Spring), "we're not happy having the entry-level Pontiac be the Vibe at its price-point, sooooo we're going to intro this car in the U.S., to be called the G5, so we're NOW going to call the Canadian version the Pursuit G5"...(where has this happened before?)
MY 2007...yup, name-change to...G5...
My points?
1) Half-a$$ed, confusing efforts in the Compact Class have led to dismal North American results for GM; and...
2) No wonder Pontiac ended where it did. Vibe is now a four-letter word, and Pontiac is no longer...
Oldsmobile, when its cancellation was anounced, posted almost 300,000 units in MY 2000; Pontiac posted almost 300,000 in '08; Buick = 130-odd in MY '08.
Conclusion?
GM's future survival depends on its "import" status, elsewhere. China specifically. So the "circle of life" is being completed. What GM has learned, or has fallen into, is that Toyota and Honda were absolutely RIGHT! "Export" your Brand elsewhere, and you can/may survive!
And where would GM be if, for whatever reason, BUICK wasn't considered an "intender" Brand in CHINA?!