CAR Management Briefing Seminars- #5

CAR MANAGEMENT BRIEFING SEMINARS #5
The Beauty and the Business Guy
By Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel.com
Detroit Bureau

This day started with an appearance of a couple of celebrities, sort of. For those who don’t know, our governor here in Michigan is probably the best looking politician in the business. She’s tall, pretty, athletic, stylish, enthusiastic and smart. Even if you don’t like her Democratic politics, she’s great to look at and a pleasure to listen to.

She seemed exceptionally energetic and enthusiastic here because she’d just come from Detroit where vice president Joe Biden announced $2.4 billion in stimulus money going to the auto industry, more than half of which would stay in Michigan. We reported on that story yesterday. The money will support R&D for electric vehicles.

The governor spent some time thanking the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and invited all out-of-staters to come to Michigan to do business. No surprise there, of course, but she said nothing about budget troubles that have plagued the state ever since she took over the reins of government – mostly in the form of huge budget deficits.

The governor quipped that she hopes the theme of the conference changes soon from this year’s “Today’s Turmoil: A Foundation for Success” to “Managing Explosive Growth.” She gets high marks for both style and content today in my view.

Following the governor was Tom Stephens, GM’s new boss of global product development, successor to iconic Bob Lutz. Stephens, a University of Michigan-trained engineer is a car enthusiast like Lutz. Formerly in charge of GM Powertrain, he has a collection of Corvettes that he can’t find time to play with. Some day he’ll get to do that, he told me.

Stephens reviewed GM’s new business philosophy of getting “more hits with fewer swings,” using a sports metaphor, and he insisted that GM will do fine with 34 nameplates instead of the more than 50 they had before closing or divesting half their brands. He touted the new Camaro, selling at the rate of 10,000 units/month, which makes 300 horsepower and 29-mpg on the highway with its standard V6 engine. A convertible Camaro is coming in about 18 months.

He ran through some of the new offerings already in the pipeline that will modernize and refresh GM’s product lineup. We’ve seen them all in concept and preproduction forms and I must say it’s an impressive lineup: Chevy Cruze, new small car to replace Cobalt; the Cadillac SRX crossover; an all-new Chevy Equinox, way upscale from the old version and capable of 32-mpg; a GMC version of the Equinox called Terraine; Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon; Chevy Aero, a 35-mpg sub-sub-compact; and Chevy Orlando, a wild, customizable tiny sporty car.

Big news was that GM will produce an all-new Buick small crossover with plug-in hybrid power using the 2.4-liter Ecotech engine. Slotted below the Enclave in size it is expected to be about the size of Chevy’s new Equinox. Sharing some components with the much-anticipated Volt, this yet unnamed Buick PHEV could be the first crossover with that forward-looking powertrain.

In terms of the long-range future Mr. Stephens restated GM’s view that ultimately they’ll be working toward hydrogen fuel cell technology, but he agreed with everyone else in the industry that there is no single solution or one dominant technology. There will be room for natural gas and propane propulsion systems, non-food bio-fuels, and electric vehicles supplied by nuclear, clean coal, solar, wind, etc.

I do not get the sense that GM is reeling from the shock of bankruptcy. From my observations here and elsewhere, it appears they have barely paused or missed a step in forging ahead. New product plans are ambitious but not a stretch, it seems to me.

We had a look at Nissan’s cute new electric vehicle, called Leaf, a four-door subcompact with swoopy tail and chunky styling. With a range of around 100 miles on a single charge it will initially be focused on urban areas with electric charging infrastructure. They will be leasing cars for fleet use late in 2010 and to the public shortly thereafter.

Things are winding down quickly here in Traverse City. It has been an eye-opening year in terms of the obvious struggles in the industry as a whole. The problems, or challenges as most prefer to call them (a semantic distinction only, I contend), are being confronted head on by everyone involved. Government, while always having been involved in the auto business in one way or another, is taking a much bigger role but I don’t doubt the Obama administration’s insistence that they want to back off as soon as possible.

It seems to me we’ve seen way less offshore representation this year, particularly the Asians. Attendance was down all around in terms of venders, attendees and media, a drastic change from last year’s conference that happened just as the worst of the downturn was happening. Perhaps we’ll see as drastic an improvement by next August.

Who knows?

We’ll bring you all the action from beautiful Traverse City again then.