THIS ISN’T TOO BAD
This article is from our archives and has not been updated and integrated with our "new" site yet... Even so, it's still awesome - so keep reading!
Published on Thu, Apr 15, 2010
By: The LACar Editorial Staff
By Bill Wright I’m driving a Buick Enclave today, which really is not the story, and I will say that I like the vehicle. But I digress. Anyway, in the car with me is a representative of a rental car firm, and one of my associates from LA Car. In the course of the conversation, someone says that the Enclave "really isn't too bad", and the others agree. After musing on that comment for a few moments, I realize that we are not expressing the opinion, "not bad, not bad at all.” What we are actually saying is, "it being GM, our expectations are low, but this vehicle really isn't too bad." It feels strange to find myself expressing that opinion, because the post-bankruptcy GM is actually a far better company, producing vehicles superior to anything that GM produced in recent memory (and I'm old enough to where 'recent memory' is actually a long time). It’s almost as though people (and in this case I mean journalists in particular) have been inoculated against the effects of any good news related to GM. Years of unfulfilled promises and seemingly endless corporate spin have inured us to the positive: If GM is saying it, it must be in large part, BS, and it needs to be closely examined. These are, after all, the same people that ran lemming-like towards the edge of cliff, all the while certain that their financial salvation was to be found in continuing to produce SUVs and trucks (big margins). After GM came out of bankruptcy, they had a hard road ahead of them. But they made some good moves by dispatching Hummer, Saturn, Pontiac, and Saab. (I will admit to being a big fan of Saab, but I never felt that it was a good fit for GM, it remains to be seen if they will fit in with Spyker). The product mix in the remaining divisions (Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick and GMC, we're sticking here to the divisions that sell products in North America) is much more in line with today's market. Nonetheless, there is an awful lot of residual bad will left over from the old GM. The people at the helm of the company today have a lot of work to do.
