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General Motors and alive-ness

Journal Entry: Fri May 1, 2009, 11:18 AM
  • Mood: Neutral
  • Listening to: The rain and thunder outside
  • Watching: The rain outside
HEADER
The current header has been removed so that it can be re-worked and restructured.


ALIVE-NESS
Okay, now that I'm in my last week of uni., I can FINALLY get back to checking over my messages, nuking ancient journals and comments, and going through my devWatch as well as pruning all the excess tabs that I have open in Firefox.

I really need to stop procrastinating on all of this crap, but I just get so distracted or wiped out that I don't wanna do anything other than veg. out in front of instant messengers.

At any rate, though, for those of you who I am watching (and are watching me back), you might get the occasional +fav in your message center. See, I've kinda started this personal policy of saving the favs for the deviations that REALLY make me go "Oh wow... that's awesome!" As for the others that I like, I right-click and save to my hard drive, and they get added to the constantly-growing library of pics that my computer's screen saver uses. (The original folders, by the way, have thousands of images from dA. :P)

My journal's CSS also needs a major update. :paranoid: It's so old that some elements just don't work anymore.

End randomness...
WWCD—WHAT WOULD CALYO DO?
Okay, so y'all have most likely heard that President Obama ordered General Motors fire their CEO, hire a n00bie, and totally restructure their entire company. Well, for those of you car people, I got a question for you.

If YOU yourself were the sole person in charge of restructuring General Motors' automotive lineup, what would YOU do?

For my answer, if I started off restructuring GM, Oldsmobile is coming back with a vengeance and I hate to say that Hummer will just HAVE to go. I know. It's sad isn't it? All you people with tiny dicks are gonna be traumatized that you can no longer compensate with a set of oversized wheels. Go buy a Cadillac and put it on 22" rims and cap yoself some gangstahz. :P

Saturn, Holden, Vauxhall, Opel, Saab, Daewoo, and Wuling will remain untouched, mostly because they're foreign or pseudo-independent nameplates (Holden is Australian; Vauxhall, Opel, & Saab are European; Daewoo is Korean; Wuling is Chinese; and Saturn just runs their own little operation for the most part anyway).

Now, on to the American nameplates and how I'd restructure them...

First of all, GMC and Chevy trucks will remain in place, but they won't be aggressively advertised. People can't afford to buy or drive huge trucks nowadays, and hybrid SUVs the size of freaking trains is just... wrong. All the hybrid drivetrain does is SLIGHTLY improve fuel economy in those monsters and that's it. Trucks were originally designed for the people that needed the high hauling capacities. Stop telling average people they need a daily-driver with a roofline that's taller than they are!

Chevrolet will instead shift their focus towards their smaller cars like the Cobalt and Aveo. They need to look at downsizing their vehicles a little bit in order to compete with the smaller-sized models offered by Ford, Chrysler, and especially the Japanese Big Three: Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.

Just for the sake of comparison, the Chevy Aveo and Cobalt respectively compete with cars like:
Ford Focus hatchback & sedan
Dodge Calibur & Avenger
Honda Fit & Civic
Nissan Versa & Altima
Toyota Yaris & Corolla
Scion xB/xD & tC
Kia Soul & Rio
Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit & Jetta
Audi A3
BMW 1 series
Volvo C30 & S40/V40

As you can see, there is a STAGGERING amount of competition against just those two models alone. It's hard to get people to want your car over others, especially since the only thing that the American Big Three have going for them is EXTREME brand-loyalty from die-hard prideful Americans.

Also, I will have GM's smaller cars start to have turbodiesels (sourced from the Vauxhall and Opel divisions) as engine options. Chevrolet will still offer a full range of cars from subcompact to full size, but it will more bias its advertising towards the smaller, more entry level range.

Pontiac is next on the list for re-doing. Pontiac will be just above Chevrolet in price. Pontiacs will be, for the most part, just like their Chevy brethren, except while Chevy is entry-level, Pontiac is sportier. They have beefier engines, their suspension is tighter, and they have sportier styling. Also, Pontiac's range will be limited from subcompact to mid size, with maybe one full-size model.

Coming up next in the list is Buick. Now, Buick's time-honored image is personal refinement (referred to as "personal luxury"). So, Buicks will have a cushier suspension for a smoother ride, they'll have smoother engines, they'll have very quiet exhaust, and the interiors will be just as cushy as the suspension to make their occupants feel "loved" by their own car, and they'll have a more civilized and refined styling to their body paneling. FYI, my grandfather owns a Buick and they are pretty darned nice cars even though they're not a full luxury brand. They have extra amenities that aren't found in Chevies, but they don't have the overwhelming excesses of Cadillac. That's what defines personal luxury. Buick's range will be limited from compact to full-size.

Oldsmobile, which will be making a comeback, will have a different image from Buick. Now, Oldsmobile has traditionally been personal luxury grade as well, BUT... Oldsmobiles define themselves as being "badass" luxury. In essence, Oldsmobiles will be pretty much the same as Buick, except they'll have higher-output engines (more power, bitch >:3 ) and regardless the size of the engine, their exhaust will be tuned to have a deeper, throatier, more aggressive growl to the tune, and for the final touch, Oldsmobiles will have more aggressive, muscle-car like styling. When you get into an Oldsmobile, most people expect civilized refinement, but when they turn the key, they also expect that engine to make its presence well-known under the hood and to sound like it can just eat your face off for lunch. Again, like Buick, Oldsmobile's range will be limited from compact to full-size.

Now on to Cadillac. While Chevy is entry-level, Pontiac is cheap and sporty, Buick is refinement, and Oldsmobile is badass gentlemen, Cadillac's main focus will be raw performance and excessive luxury. Cadillac has always been a luxury marque, and that ain't about to end anytime soon. They'll have fairly stiff, but still refined suspension (after all, it's Cadillac), they'll have high-performance engines, and my god you'll be surrounded by as many bells and whistles as brands like Mercedes-Benz or BMW. Cadillac will be able to offer a full range of cars (including sub-compacts).

As I've said about Saturn, I'mm'a let the sleeping dragon lie. Saturn's doing their stuff up right for the most part, and they've got a really nice, angular image while still being pretty durned cheap. As a result, I'm just going to let them continue running their game the way they wanna.

So that's what I would do if I restructured general motors. Now that I've tossed away my two cents, I want to hear yours. What would you do (aside from dismantling the entire company) if YOU were in charge of restructuring General Motors?


COUNTDOWN TO AC09


ANNOUNCEMENT
Due to the deviantART April Fool's joke raping the hell out of my journal's footer, it has been removed until further notice. Thank you.

Devious Comments

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:iconcatprog:
The 1st thing I would do is to hire people that knew what they were doing as adviser. (I know little about cars)

One other thing I would be doing is looking into manufacturing a tesla-like car. there is demand, cheap to run and very little competition.

--
Support me at BvS [link]
The new address of my site [link]
:icondraconis-de-christus:
You probably could already guess what I would do, but I'll just go ahead and remove all doubt.

You already know of my enthusiasm for micro-diesel vehicles, such as Loremo, and tiny cars in general such as Aptera, the Tuk Tuk, etc.

Building cars to carry one or two people that weigh a couple of tons is just an outdated, inefficient way to do things. These are the days of carbon composite materials, ANSYS and Mechatronics. With technology like this, if we are willing to redesign the way we design, we could usher in a whole new era of automotive super efficiency.

So there...my thoughts, cut down to a nano-synapse.

--
"If you want to be wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them."
~C. S. Lewis

Gnomes...You Can't Touch Them! [link]
:icondragon-architect:
The problem with carbon composites is they're still EXCEEDINGLY expensive to manufacture with. That's why you don't see them in many applications at all--especially in the automotive industry. They're just too expensive and too difficult to work with (you have to align the weave just right for maximum strength like you would fibreglass), and as a result they're only found in racing vehicles and supercars.

Steel and aluminum are far easier to work since you just need the same assembly line tooling that already exists in today's factories. If they make the switch to carbon composites, all of that tooling will have to be replaced with brand new tooling and all of the workers will have to be re-trained. That is a MASSIVE expense in its own right.
:icondragon-architect:
One problem. Electric motors are expensive as all hell. I looked into their prices at a local electric motors business and a good 50ish hp DC motor can run well into the tens of thousands.

The Tesla roadster is expensive because of the electric motors that power it, and it's also because of the electric motors that hybrids like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight also have elevated price tags.
:icondraconis-de-christus:
I've seen how carbon composites are manufactured. I had an entire class on material sciences, actually.

Really carbon composites are just a small off-the-top-of-my-head example of the new technology available these days. Carbon composites are not my point.

My point is that we need to rethink how we design vehicles from the traditional at-least-a-ton gas hogs that proliferate the current world market. Essentially my main idea is that even with a lot of new technologies and ideas on the market, the automotive industry still hangs onto a lot of dead albatrosses that are holding the market back from a safer and more efficient era of transportation.

--
"If you want to be wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them."
~C. S. Lewis

Gnomes...You Can't Touch Them! [link]
:iconcatprog:
The reason they are expensive is due to a lack of production of them. Same with Stirling engines.

Another big expense is batteries.

--
Support me at BvS [link]
The new address of my site [link]

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10 deviants said HEADSHOT, BITCH! (neck-up bust of me)
31%
8 deviants said Show off da good stuff (waist-up of anthro form)
19%
5 deviants said Run for your lives!!! (full body feral form)
12%
3 deviants said Jus' goin' fer a stroll (full body anthro form)

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"The real draconic is the one we all speak, one that is spoken in all dilects, the language of our draconic feelings, if dragons are as wise as the legands say, then that would be the language they would have chosen." -- ~goldblaze

«DISCLAIMER»
If all you got from me is a favorite, consider it my one-word comment on your deviation.

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