Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/592284
Lesson Learned 18 www.studentdriverplacement.com November '15 By Jack Roberts My Dad was always a GM guy. He drives a Hyundai now, and he loves it. But back in the day, the bigger, heavier and more powerful the General Motors car, the more he loved it. Our family entered the OPEC oil embargo in the mid '70s with an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and a Pon- tiac Bonneville parked in the garage. There are Russian tanks that get bet- ter fuel effi ciency than those cars. A bloated business structure and in- credible ineffi ciencies nearly killed GM back around 2008, when our entire economy was teetering on the edge of disaster. Drastic measures were needed to survive. So, goodbye, my beloved Pontiac. Farewell, Oldsmobile. Hasta la vista, Hummer. Saturn – we barely knew ya! Don't forget to write! Things were equally grim on the truck side of the equation. Chevy and GM wound down its long and profi table partnership with Isuzu. And in a move that showed just how serious things really were, it slit the throat of its entire medium-duty, vocational truck business, essentially surrendering the fi eld to Ford and Dodge. Trucks are big business today. And not having a robust vocational product in the market is a handicap no car dealer likes to take the fi eld with. For one thing, vocational trucks are very good for marketshare numbers. For another, if you've got a customer who loves Silverados and his wife loves Tahoes, you really don't want that guy poking around on the Ford lot when he needs new service trucks for his business. Finally, if you're running ads on TV talking about how tough your trucks are, it's really a good idea to have some out there working hard in the real world to back that claim up. So I'm happy to report that GM and, Medium-duty moves: GM, Chevy reenter the truck market with strategic partnerships The International WorkStar