GM uses Saturn to test its turnaround plans

Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice president for sales, service and marketing, said GM’s products should all be substantially new in another 12-18 months. Key is the redesigned Chevrolet Malibu due out later this year to take on Toyota’s Camry.

But it will take a while longer for the company to get its message to consumers as it rolls out competitive entries in the small and mid-sized car markets, LaNeve said.

“We’re not going to have it solved in the next 12 to 18 months,” he said.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said GM’s cost-cutting efforts have enabled it to put more money back into products and be more disciplined on prices. He thinks GM’s positive results will accelerate as more new products hit showrooms.

“I think we’re going to see profitability that is going to surprise a lot of people,” Cole said.

But David Koehler, a marketing professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied GM, said while its products have improved, it still has to overcome its old image of lacking fuel efficiency and quality.

“The story remains to be told if they are able to reposition that image,” he said.

His students, Koehler said, still believe Toyota has the edge in quality and gas mileage, and that’s the market GM must win over.

Lutz, a frequent critic of media coverage, said part of GM’s difficulties is that the media portrays the company inaccurately.

Some media outlets, he said, always use the “gas-guzzling” prefix to describe GM vehicles, but fail to do so on large Toyotas that get worse gas mileage than their GM counterparts.

“People are starting to think a little bit before they automatically fall into the conventional, easy categorization of Toyota — wonderful, smart, consumer focused, energy saving. GM — dumb, insensitive, big trucks, gas guzzlers, don’t give a damn about everything. We’re starting to crack that open a little bit,” Lutz said.

Toyota is well aware that GM has momentum. Its new cars are winning awards, and to Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor North America, the new Malibu was the top car at the big auto show in Detroit.

“You just go down the list of things to do right that they’re doing, and to some extent you have to do those right things and then you hold on and you wait for the rain to stop,” Press said. “And I think the rain is starting to stop.”

At present, though, even GM concedes Toyota has consumer preference down.

“They’re winning, no question,” LaNeve said. “They’re on a big roll the last year-and-a-half or so. But we’ve made great progress, so it’s not like there can’t be more than one successful car company in the world.”

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