Professor Elam

B/W has an interesting commentary on page 40 of the 1/29/07 issue.  Supposedly GM is not stil tied to the idea of being number one automaker no matter what. The author wonders if Rick Wagoner is ready to let go or notmentioning whether GM will buy Malaysian automaker Proton.  Toyota’s tear of new models et al has increased the number of recalls. And GM has ditched both mini vans and small pickups deciding it cannot compete there.  Is GM ready to be number two?

Which brings me to another issue. If you were Toyota, would you have entered the big pickup, read Tundra, market.  Doing so required entirely new plants and advertising. It flies in the face of the general reputation that Toyota has of being a ‘green’ car company.  Conceivably it could turn off green customers.  Another issue is whether this is really smart in the US. Toyota et al have won the car wars with most Americans believing Japanese quality is better. Trucks are the last stand for GM Ford Dodge. Might it be smarter to just let those three have the big pickup market with its bad publicity of high gas mileage facing increasing CAFE standards. If you have a fuel eficient fleet, why get into the 5,000 pound 5.7L V 8 market, especially knowing that even bigger trucks using huge diesel engines will be required to field a complete lineup?  Frankly especially with GM And Ford giving up the smaller pickup market, I think I would have taken a pass on this one. After all Honda and BMW don’t make pickups, Honda finally came out with the Ridgeline but it is a sort of Japanese El Camino really.

DLE