Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Great-Rant-De-Lorenzo-Brings-the-Thunder-Again.html

[studemax]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

Dude makes sense.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

I agree with him, business is prospective - not retrospective..... to further illuminate, a customer goes "that's a great product" - meaning the product has been design in a manner that appeals to his current schema - but the product was actually designed 3-5 years ago (or more) thus his view is retrospective because the marketeer foresaw his desire and rose to the challenge to meet it. But, that same customer 5 years ago would never say "that's a great product, I'll buy it in 5 years when it comes out" their desire is for the immediate and they will satisfy their immediate desire by buying what is available today and if, when the product comes out, they still want it - they'll buy it. Business go bankrupt doing that..... GM seems to think that because they were successful with the 4 year wait for the Camaro that it (the business model) will work for more mundane stuff (like the Buick they just killed).... it won't, GM seems to have forgotten the memorable failures that prove the Camaro is a unique car not a market trend (SSR, the Aztek, etc)...... so in a longwinded way, I agree with De Lorenzo - the engineers need to man up and take the risks they're paid to take..... otherwise GM's current new stuff will be the fond memory and the corp. will be bankrupt.

[Falcon67]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

He hit that one on the head. I think that just about applies to any business. "Do it, then talk about it" - I'd go with that.

[38P]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

"(the Internet has unleashed a horde of instant armchair auto ?experts?)"

"I sat in on countless focus groups and product clinics where the public was asked to weigh-in, and the sum total of their contribution to the process of attempting to move the ball forward - after basically saying Imports = Good, Detroit = Bad - amounted to nothing."

He's kind of taking a shot at us. Not as overtly as when Ford SVT's John Clor lamented that auto blogs were just "smog on the internet." But there is a touch of insider/elitism to DeLorenzo's tone.

Actually listening to knowledgable customers, mechanics, hot rodders, and even some dealers (the occasional ones with some sense about automobility) would have materially altered about 90% of GM's product offerings over the past forty years. I could list pages of mistakes that were obvious to everyone but GM.

That being said, the design-by-committee-consensus mentality has not served Detroit well. Legendary cars almost always come from strong individuals or small teams.

So he partly right . . . and partly wrong.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

But there is a touch of insider/elitism to DeLorenzo's tone.

Noooooooooooooo. ;)

[SpiderGearsMan]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

but but GM is bankrupt
writing up too many bad mortgages on the wrong side of the tracks is what we call it

[LXbuilder]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

While I'm not a big fan of Peter's style of writing, I have been reading his blog for a couple years now and find I agree with him more times than not. He often shows that thing that Detroit lacks... common sense. ;D

[oldsman496]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

The info gathered during a 'focus' group discussion/interview, is as maleable as playdoh. It can provide ammunition for most any viewpoint you so desire as the majority of participants in the groups are simply sheep....they are able to be manipulated through the process. just like the real public. If a business is under the gun to support its viewpoints to another party they may be interested in providing ammunition for their view. how ya gonna get that? :-X

[SpiderGearsMan]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

it would be easy to poke fun at the old regime at the general if it was just a car company
GM is a bank
GM is entertainment [directv-XM satellite radio ]
GM owned pieces of media darling companies that flat out didn't perform [suzuki -subaru-fiat-isuzu-nummi]
GM is the military industrial complex [hughes]
GM is the first networker [eds]
GM is like an old socialist country , paying people for decades after they retired
selling off electro motive -allison - medium duty - delco battery - spinning off delco
were just to keep the retiree gravy train rollin along
too bad most of their dealer employees are not even offered a 401 k or even medical benefits that low grade line employees of the company get
lavish benefits

[1970camaroRS]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

Just look at how the 787 Dreamliner has turned out for Boeing. It was hyped to no end and now more than two years after 'roll-out' on 7/8/07 to show off our new airplane...we're still engineering the damn thing.

[dieselgeek]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

I agree with SPeedzter, there is no absolute "wrong" or "right" and the guy puts me off a little bit with his "screw the public, WE know how to build cars" Um, sorry, NO you do NOT know how to build cars because your shitty organization has built junk for how many years? that not even the loyal Hotrodders, GM faithful, can stand.

And his implication that GM's reputation compared to imports is nothing more than some "Armchair Critic" whining, is 100% BULLSHIT. GM has earned their position as the company that builds the throwaway car. They have SPECIFICALLY directed their engineers to build cars that provide "reliability" up to a certain mileage, then fall apart methodically with the thinking that they want people to buy a replacement every 2-3 years... that's not me just "picking on poor GM" - that's me, who tried making the first three cars I ever paid for myself, be BASIC RELIABLE TRANSPORTATION for more than 90,000 miles total. Yeah, that 2.8 v6 motor was a real nice piece! (of crap). The 4.3 v6 that followed it, well, I guess that's not GM's fault that the "first versions" of that crap pile were 100% unable to stay running without more maintenance per mile than a Top Fuel engine...

Don't even start with that typical american theme of "oh, everyone is picking on us, poor us" - no, the problem is, we got lazy, and we make CRAPPY PRODUCTS. GM needed to suck it up, and LISTEN to the consumer. And I don't mean "hotrodder" I mean, the people who may buy their products. We want something reliable, safe, economical, that simply provides AS MUCH PER DOLLAR AS POSSIBLE.

It's not hard to build a decent car. There are tons of them out there.

[38P]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

Yeah, that 2.8 v6 motor was a real nice piece! (of crap). The 4.3 v6 that followed it, well, I guess that's not GM's fault that the "first versions" of that crap pile were 100% unable to stay running without more maintenance per mile than a Top Fuel engine...

Oh man, I'm flashing back to a certain mid-80s 2.8-powered S-10 that exploded its clutch (big bang pulling away from a stop light at about one-quarter throttle at five m.p.h.) and a few months later required a whole new mill (thankfully under warranty) . . . or a Quad 4 Olds that went through two cylinder heads and one whole engine . . . or a rippling non-SS 305 Monte Carlo that "blew" its 2.73-geared non-positraction rear axle at about 35,000 miles and seemed to run on consuming its A.I.R. injector tubes (creating the dreaded "lava flow" cat) . . . . Some of those Roger Smith-era GM cars were about the best advertisements possible for switching to Ford or one of the import invaders.

The info gathered during a 'focus' group discussion/interview, is as maleable as playdoh. It can provide ammunition for most any viewpoint you so desire as the majority of participants in the groups are simply sheep....they are able to be manipulated through the process. just like the real public. If a business is under the gun to support its viewpoints to another party they may be interested in providing ammunition for their view. how ya gonna get that? :-X

It's true that market research brought us the Edsel and that Anna Muccioli's whining gave Lee Iacocca the "cover" he needed to produce the rolling abortion known as the Mustang II. And the GM "dustbuster" minivans reportedly "focus grouped" well. That's why you've got to be careful picking your focus groups. A roomful of malleable, know-nothing appliance motorists won't work. You don't want the "O.J. jury" as a focus group . . . .

And you've got to have "with it" people running the process. They've got to be objective "car people" who are interested in really listening (not manipulating or CYA) and who use common sense in applying what they hear.

And you've got to ask the right questions (which is a hard thing to do if all you use focus groups for is to validate decisions that you've already made).

The alternative to focus group abuse is not just "shut up" and blindly do what you wanted to do anyhow (which seems to be what DeLorenzo suggests). The alternative is managing the process and obtaining real, informed feedback from a wide cross-section of end users and experts (and not just those who see all cars as black boxes to be traded in when the lease is up or the payment book is empty). And it seems to me that the most loyal and knowledgable supporters of a brand (i.e. hot rodders and grassroots racers) ought to factor promiently in that feedback process.

Chrysler did a forgotten study back in the days of planning for the 1968 Road Runner in which it analyzed the market for a new performance car. It found that a small hard-core segment functioned as opinion leaders. Consequently, the Road Runner was geared (albeit at a low price point) to appeal to these opinion leaders. Several years of success ensued. It only ended when insurance costs and emissions pressure on performance managed to kill off the appeal of the car to the opinion leading segment.

In selling anything, you've got to know your customers and what they want and/or need (even if they're not the best at always articulating it). If you ignore that step, you're just shooting in the dark.

Of course you simply don't have to focus group "common sense" items such as reliablity and ease of maintenance/repair.

[38P]

Re: Great Rant: De Lorenzo Brings the Thunder Again

Just look at how the 787 Dreamliner has turned out for Boeing. It was hyped to no end and now more than two years after 'roll-out' on 7/8/07 to show off our new airplane...we're still engineering the damn thing.

Sounds more like the "Nightmare Liner." Perhaps Mulally made a good decision "pulling the 'chute" for FoMoCo when he did . . . .