Say Good-Bye to Your Father's Buick (The Olds Is Already Gone)

Bringing Home a Good Lesson Learned in China

An interesting article.

Dont doubt that Buick and Pontiac will go the way of Oldsmobile and close, while Chevrolet sinks further into selling a morass of poorly designed larger cars and nondescript small ones that can't compete with Suburu and Hyandai, much less Honda and Toyota. Impalas and Malibus that are a shadow of their former selves... forgettable Cobalts and Avelopes, or something like that?

That leaves us Cadillac and Saturn, which pretty well cover the American market as it has deteriorated for the American manufacturers. Of course, Cadillac is really no longer a luxury brand (in the ilk of BMW, Mercedes or Lexus), but it qualifies as a decent Olds. Saturn provides a moderate quality small car for those who, for whatever reason, are still willing to give American manufacturers a chance, even after all of their customer abuse.

I realized that there wasn't the slightest hope that the American manufacturers would ever recover when GM started its "Mr. Goodwrench" ads just a few years ago. Mr. Goodwrench? Why would I want to know an auto mechanic? My Japanese cars dont know auto mechanics. I recall my father's generation, many of whom really did have a relationship with car mechanics. The Japanese, for all of their problems, showed us that this was an unnecessary addiction. Thank God, an increasingly large share of the market no longer has the patience for such foolishness.

Count me out.