Intrigue, German-Style, in Ongoing Porsche-VW Tussle
September 19, 2008
By Bill Visnic
Take volatile and imperious-but-brilliant exec Ferdinand
Piech. Add a dash of labor-union maneuvering. Spice comes from high-line maker Porsche. Throw into the pot that is Germany's largest automaker, VW.
The resulting stew is on the boil in another late-summer German industrial power play.
(Read more...)
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GM Chooses Its Best-Ever Cars; Money-Making Trucks Noticeably Absent
September 18, 2008
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT - As part of its GMnext centennial celebration which concluded this week, General Motors Corp. released a list of its "Top 10 Production Vehicles" from the thousands of models it has developed since the company's inception in 1908.
And the "Like a Rock" crowd won't necessarily be pleased - although GM's full-size pickups often were best-sellers and profits from pickups and SUVs filled the corporate coffers for much of the 1990s and early part of this century, there's nary a truck or SUV on the list.
GM says the choices were selected by company archivists and historians and reviewed by "GM senior leaders." None of them must have been truck guys. Or Camaro guys. Or - okay, you get the idea: the list may be skewed by a kind of historian's mindset, and is unlikely to fully please even the most ardent GM supporter.
The company avoided further controversy by refusing to actually pick a No. 1 model. Instead, it lists the 10 most significant models in chronological order:
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GM's "Future Leaders": Christopher Borroni-Bird
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
With so much pressure from every quarter on General Motors and other automakers to make huge leaps forward in fuel-efficiency -- and now! -- Christopher Borroni-Bird has become a major player on the most important stage in the global automotive industry.
And he understands the urgency of the task.
"There's more urgency than even six months ago," said the 43-year-old U.K. native, who is GM's director of advanced vehicle technology concepts in Detroit.
(Read more...)
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GM's "Future Leaders": Jeffrey Kimpan
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
From his first job as a summer intern turning copper ingots into wire at a Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio, to his new post as vice president of human resources for the company's entire Asia-Pacific region, Jeffrey Kimpan has learned about as much as anyone could about General Motors and its people.
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Leasing Fades With Credit Crunch, but It Won't Disappear
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
The bloody purge of the U.S. financial industry and its millions of shaky real-estate loans already have forced most automakers to cut way back on lease deals for their customers, an unavoidable blow given the importance of credit to the new-vehicle market.
But auto-company executives aren't giving up on the practice for the long term, believing that today's shakeout will help set the stage for a healthier leasing market in the future. Some of them actually are moving preemptively to ramp up leasing even in the short term instead of cut back.
Meantime, enormous pain is being inflicted on the many automakers that have grown dependent on leasing, the other part of a whopping double whammy that also includes the overall sales slide in the U.S. market.
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GM's 'Future Leaders': Maryann Combs
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
Maryann Combs still remembers vividly her first assignment for General Motors: bolting generators to engine blocks on the Pontiac, Mich., truck-assembly line, as part of her internship while attending General Motors Institute.
"For a teenaged female right out of high school, it was an eye-opening experience," recalled Combs, who now is president of GM's Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai.
Beyond awakening, Combs found the experience transforming.
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GM's 'Future Leaders': Mike Devereux
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
A few years ago, General Motors canned its initial task force that was charged with making sense of Internet sales and marketing, called eGM, and Mike Devereux was one of those who got dislocated. "EGM was wine before our time," he said.
But now, as GM's executive director of digital and CRM marketing, Devereux believes that he and the company finally are in the right places when it comes to exploiting the online medium. "The job I have now isn't wine before its time," said the 43-year-old native Brit. "It's prime time."
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GM's Day-Long Anniversary Fete Highlighted by Volt, Lots of Chat
September 16, 2008
DETROIT - By lunchtime on the day General Motors Corp. chose to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a massive celebration here and an ambitious interactive program on the Web, it was apparent the world's largest automaker had the tech requirements figured out. There were no major glitches and GM deftly executed a global multimedia presentation - drawing from four additional regions around the globe - that would have done Microsoft proud.
The culmination, however, was the official unveiling of the vehicle that has emerged as the symbol - and rallying point - of GM's drive to remain as pertinent in the next 100 years of personal transportation: the Chevrolet Volt "extended-range" electric vehicle.
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GM's 'Future Leaders': Carlos Barba
September 16, 2008
By Dale Buss
Carlos Barba will mark the 24th anniversary of his employment by General Motors on Tuesday - the same date, September 16, that GM itself was founded exactly one century ago today.
And in many ways, Barba, who is general director of GM's Latin America design studios in Sao Paulo, embodies so much of what has changed about the giant company. He's a designer working in an important developing market - but also a player in the increasingly integrated global design network that GM has been putting together to share best designs and best practices in each of its markets around the world.
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Posted by Michelle Krebs at 2:43 AM under GM , Personalities | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
GM's 'Future Leaders': Anthony Lo
September 16, 2008
By Dale Buss
As he worked his way up through the design ranks at Lotus, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Saab, Anthony Lo proved his creative chops over and over again on models ranging from the Audi A4 to the Mercedes-Benz F200 concept car.
But now that he is executive director of design for GM of Europe, the demands on Lo are more often about organizing and motivating others, and balancing budgets and priorities - not only putting his stylistic imprints on future models. And he's willing to admit the different nature of the challenges.
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