GM goes home.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. Bad news in the car business or in politics or in corporate America, for that matter, always seems to come on a Friday afternoon after most people are gone for the weekend, and even in this 24/7 Internet-fueled craziness that we live in today, that’s still true. Avoid the negative news hit, or at least soften the blow by letting the news out with fewer people paying attention, and you’re better off. It’s from the corporate PR handbook – class 101 - and it’s the accepted way of handling things.

True to form, the news out of GM last Friday night not only wasn’t good, it was a giant, heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good and it unfortunately says more about what the company – the real GM – stands for than any launch of a new Corvette could possibly say.

The bad news? GM is walking away from the idea of creating an “ultimate” Cadillac. As some of you might remember, GM unveiled the stunning Cadillac Ciel concept (see below) before the famed Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance two years ago to much fanfare. It was a stunning design surprise that was elegantly rendered and beautifully presented, and though it was shown in showstopping convertible form, GM operatives let it be known that there could be something in the works along the lines of the Ciel, something that would finally allow Cadillac to go toe-to-toe with the top models from the leading German players in the luxury-performance end of the business, and mean it.

I stumbled across a visual expression of the sedan version of the Ciel for a nanosecond a year ago on a visit to GM Design, and it was fantastic. I also was hurried past an interior buck for the new Cadillac that was sumptuous and gorgeous. It left no doubt in my mind that the True Believers in GM Design were more than capable of delivering an ultimate Cadillac.

But then again, the True Believers in Design, Engineering and Product Development have never been the problem for General Motors. They carried the company through its acknowledged heyday – roughly 1955 to 1975 – and they carried the company throughout the ensuing Dark Years, when it teetered from one management debacle to another. No, the True Believers couldn’t keep GM from slipping into bankruptcy during the financial tsunami that almost wrecked the entire domestic auto industry in 2008, but they kept GM in the game for decades, at times literally against all odds.

No, the real problem for GM has always been its paralyzing financial structure fueled by maliciously incompetent managers who actually believed that they knew what they were doing and had only the very best interests of the company in mind, when it was obvious to everyone else that they were awkward corporate stumblebums who made the conscious decision to forget what business they were allegedly associated with every single day of their lives.

It was always about the money at General Motors, to the detriment of everything else. After all, the famous adage perennially associated with GM was that it wasn’t in business to make cars; it was in the business of making money, or as its most pivotal and influential leader, Alfred P. Sloan, emphatically once said, “The business of business is business.”

And with this Cadillac decision, we are brutally reminded of that intractable fact yet again.

According to last Friday’s piece by Jens Meiners with Mike Collias in Automotive News, the preferred angle that GM wanted to have “out there” in media land was that the ultimate Cadillac was killed because it wasn’t “special” enough and that it wasn’t a big enough departure from the next-generation XTS sedan that’s coming in 2016-17, the car based on a new rear-wheel-drive platform code named Omega that’s supposed to be hot.

And I can tell you for a fact that is unmitigated bullshit.

The real reason? It was the cost of the program. Particularly ominous horror stories about GM cost-cutters laying waste to the ultimate Cadillac program started to emerge six months ago, with rumors that the GM bean-counting corps were doing their very best to dumb-down the interior of the new super Cadillac in the name of saving money and getting the cost out, because as the program existed it wasn’t going to make enough money.

Now, it’s important to point out a few things here. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Audi’s dedication to winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans year after year, when it could be argued that they have more than proven their point, especially after their latest victory, which was their twelfth at the world’s most important and prestigious sports car race.

Audi does this to demonstrate its commitment to its philosophy of “never follow” – to underline its clear demarcation from its competitors in the luxury-performance segment. But it’s more than that. It’s an example of corporate will that few companies are willing to commit to, let alone emulate.

Ferrari and Mercedes show it in Formula 1 as well, but you have to remember that the bottom line in these examples isn’t the bottom line. The ROI of Audi’s involvement in sports car racing and Mercedes’ and Ferrari’s involvement in F1 cannot be quantified financially. Oh, they may take a feeble swing at it once in a while when some sort of a response is needed, but who’s kidding whom, here? They do it because they believe in it and it’s integral to the fabric of those respective companies. It is their raison d’etre, not some hollow corporate marketing phrase trotted out at auto shows for the edification of the media.

That kind of a commitment to being the best at something isn’t part of the equation at General Motors. Make no mistake, it very much is with the GM’s True Believers, but the other side of the house certainly doesn’t believe in it, never has and never will, in fact. And when push comes to shove they will make sure that kind of unbridled thinking doesn’t get too far.

And GM’s financial minions have the perfect “leader” at the helm right now to make sure that things don’t get too far. Dan “Captain Queeg” Akerson is an avowed cost-cutter because let’s face it, when you have a fundamental lack of understanding of the business and you’ve made your reputation in private equity – that vast corporate wasteland of parasitic greed masquerading as corporate saviors - one’s skill set is pretty much limited to that.

Akerson is laying waste to GM’s future product programs right and left because he believes that his rightful legacy will be that of “The Man Who Saved General Motors” when in fact the damage he will do to GM’s competitiveness during his tenure before he trots off to accept accolades from his network of PE buddies for extracting millions for himself while saving the “little people” – aka the intellectually inferior hordes toiling in the industry that he loathes with every fiber of his being - from their predetermined misery, will be incalculable.

I’d like to say that the True Believers will eventually win out in this titanic struggle within GM, but it’s notgonnahappen. There is a fundamental vacuousness within GM that just won’t allow it. It runs through the pitiful excuse of the company’s Board of Directors and it runs throughout its financial structure and decision-making process like a plague. And because of it GM is the quintessential definition of a “soulless enterprise” and thus it will always be so.

Completely lost in this discussion is the fact that Cadillac desperately needs a halo car, and counter to GM PR minion-speak, the upcoming ELR doesn’t cut it. It’s nice, but a divisional flagship? Please. GM keeps telling us that Cadillac will be its global spear-carrier in the luxury market, but when they consistently shoot themselves in the head with mind-numbingly dumb decisions like these, to say that their statements lack credibility just doesn't do it justice.

There is no amount of marketing that “brand leader” Bob Ferguson can muster to take Cadillac to the next level, either. GM’s lobbyist-cum-Amway-salesman is so over his head anyway, judging by the constant generation of hot air blowing from the RenCen that it sounds for all the world like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing.

GM needed to make a definitive statement about what Cadillac is and will be that will focus the brand for the consumer public well into this century. And by making the decision to pull the plug on a statement Cadillac, the powers that be within GM have just reminded everyone in this business - and the world - that they’re not only incapable of it, even worse, they don’t believe it’s necessary.

It’s a classic example of GM’s lowest-common-denominator thinking at its absolute worst. If they can fake it and get by – and make boatloads of money doing it – what difference does it make?

What difference, indeed.

Other automobile manufacturers step on the gas while firmly believing in the concept of “Go Big, or Go Home” – and the results are not always excellent or noteworthy, but the fact that they have the balls to put it on the line is admirable and more often than not pays handsome dividends.

By killing the ultimate Cadillac, GM has decided to just “go home” and there’s nothing admirable or noteworthy about it.

It's just pathetic.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

(Images of the Cadillac Ciel courtesy of GM Design)
The Cadillac Ciel.

The unmistakable stance, the heroic presence - the Cadillac Ciel had it all.

The interior of the Ciel: Sumptuous. Elegant. Impeccable.

Emphasizing texture, touch and color, the pleasing and inviting interior environment of the Ciel was befitting a "statement" Cadillac.

A lingering image of what could have been for Cadillac and GM, now relegated to the dustbin of GM history.