The automobile business has been inundated over the years with ways. There was the infamous Toyota Way for instance, which once focused on a car-building regimen founded on measured improvement stressing quality above all else. And it served Toyota remarkably well, until they got greedy of course and became consumed with the idea of being No. 1. Then 35 years of slow and steady product improvement and quality leadership turned to crap in a matter of eighteen months. They’re still recovering.
Then there was the “GM Way” of the late 50s through the mid 70s when Alfred Sloan’s visionary “ladder” system took buyers from their initial car ownership years to their graves in a series of GM products, with Chevrolet giving way to Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and then Cadillac. It worked extraordinarily well when GM dominated the market (to the tune of almost 50 percent at its peak) during those golden years, not so much after the import “invasion” changed – and eventually altered – the American auto market landscape for good. Now? GM is scrambling to deliver great mass-market machines under a withering cost-cutting regimen that leaves no margin for error. It’s the hard-knock life for GM from here on out.
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