Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Blur
 Let me tell you something. You can't run a huge company with 5 employees. Just because your franchise of McDonald's can handle your load of customers doesn't mean that the world's most sizable automaker—if not in production, than in sheer variety of cars—can do it. It doesn't make sense. Does the US government operate on 3 bureaus? Does Britain's government? Find me a functional government that does. Now apply this basic logic to a car company. It needs a variety of products, brands, and designs to compete with the international market. If you want to take that away from GM, you'll return to an age of rebadging the same car for every brand, low horsepower, and long product cycles due to a lack of funding for R&D rather than having a long cycle due to a good product that sells.
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Honda and Toyota have been doing fantastic with nothing more than the original platforms of the Camry and Corolla, and Civic and Accord. They develop them continually improve them, and use them to spread accross all of their nameplates and their lines of cars. They have 2 or 3 divisions. This is what is considered keeping things fit and trim, and still continuing to expand and grow without getting too big for their own good. Honda is especially good at this. That is one of the reasons their CEO was named Automobile Magazine's CEO of the year last year. They have the ability to quickly and efficiently "downsize" when needed, without affecting many jobs. If the market goes up in only one segment, overnight they can turn up production on that one specific vehicle. If overnight that one vehicle goes down, they can react just as quickly. Their employees are trained in many facets of the company so they can go from job to job in order to keep their jobs.
They offer a dizzying array of different cars, two and 4 door, manuals and automatics, wagons, utility vehicles, econo-boxes, and gas guzzlers, off of the two most basic platforms which have their roots 30 years ago. And the cars that those platforms are made for have been continually refined and improved each and every model cycle - which continues to be exactly 5 years, and always has been. Always will be. If GM had followed such a principle, we'd have some really great Bell Air Impalas today. With 6 speed transmissions, 300 horse 24 valve V6s, all wheel drive, features like nav, bluetooth, and power heated seats all for under 30k, available in two or 4 doors, with a manual or automatic, room for 5 or 6, and yet their roots would still be tied to the 1953 Bell Air.