Learning from the big three automakers

General Motors is now a health care provider for its retirees and employees, sponsored by selling cars and trucks.

GM and the UAW worked together to get us into that mess during the good cash years of the last century. It doesn’t work now.

Health care and so-called “legacy costs” are NOT bankrupting General Motors. General Motors is. If General Motors can’t design, engineer, and market a car that consumers want to buy, they put all of their employees in financial peril.

Why are Toyota and other foreign manufacturers selling their cars like hot cakes? Because they also know how to market and advertise an emotional purchase!

My observations as a marketing professional in the Detroit area make me worry about the industry. The GM executives, fat bonuses in hand, work with advertising agencies that operate and innovate like they are advertising George Jetson in the 1950′s. Their “product” would make me laugh it didn’t make me cry.

Yes, retiree benefits are very generous. But GM has no one to blame but themselves for the financial condition of their firm and Delphi.