Wednesday, April 01, 2009

GM and the SUV

Could journalists please stop saying that General Motors has failed because it made a huge bet on gas-guzzling SUVs. The notion is that somehow GM would be ok today if only it had been building green cars all along. This is complete nonsense. GM did not get in trouble in the past few years. Its demise traces back to the 1970s, far before the term "SUV" was even invented. In the 1960s, GM's market share stood at 50%. By the mid to late 1980s, it had fallen to 35%. By the late 1990s, GM's share had fallen below 30%. This crisis has been a long time in the making.

No comments: