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General Motors

Type	Public (NYSE: GM)
Founded	1908
Location	Detroit, Michigan; manufacturing facilities in 30 U.S. states and 32 countries
Key people	Rick Wagoner, Chairman & CEO
Industry	Automotive
Slogan
Products	automobiles engines
Revenue	US$193.5 billion USD (2004)
Operating income	{{{operating_income}}}
Net income	{{{net_income}}}
Employees	324,000 (2004)
Website	www.gm.com
{{{footnotes}}}

"GM" redirects here. For other uses, see GM (disambiguation).

General Motors Corporation NYSE: GM, also known as GM, is a United States-based automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Vauxhall.

Chevrolet and GMC divisions produce trucks, as well as passenger vehicles. Other brands include ACDelco, Allison Transmission, and the General Motors Electro-Motive Division which produces diesel-electric locomotives. GM also has stakes in Isuzu and Suzuki in Japan and a joint venture with AvtoVAZ in Russia. In December 2003, it acquired Delta in South Africa, in which it had taken a 45 percent stake in 1997, and which is now a fully-owned subsidiary, General Motors South Africa. General Motors is also a majority shareholder (50.9%) in GM Daewoo.

GM's headquarters are in the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan. The company is the world's largest vehicle manufacturer and employs over 340,000 people. In 2001, GM sold 8.5 million vehicles through all its branches; in 2002, GM sold 15 percent of all cars and trucks in the world. They also owned Electronic Data Systems from 1984 to 1996 and, prior to selling it to News Corporation, DirecTV. GM owned Frigidaire from 1918 to 1979.

Contents 1 History 1.1 General Motors Hughes Electronics 2 Corporate structure and issues 2.1 Social policies 2.2 Subsidies 2.3 Marketing problems 2.4 Financial woes 2.5 Plant locations 2.6 Alternative vehicles 3 See also 4 External links

History

General Motors (GM) was founded in 1908 in Flint, Michigan as a holding company for Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant, and acquired Oldsmobile later that year. Durant was the grandfather of Tim Cassady who later became a well known prosecutor in Genesee County. The next year, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, and Oakland.

During the 1920s and 1930s, General Motors bought out the bus company Yellow Coach, helped create Greyhound bus lines, replaced intercity train transport with buses, and established subsidiary companies to buy out streetcar companies and replace the rail-based services with buses. GM formed United Cities Motor Transit in 1932 (see General Motors streetcar conspiracy for additional details).

General Motors bought the internal combustion engined railcar builder Electro-Motive Corporation and its engine supplier Winton Engine in 1930, renaming both as the General Motors Electro-Motive Division. Over the next twenty years, diesel-powered locomotives and trains – the majority built by GM – largely replaced other forms of traction on American railroads. (During WW2, these engines were also important in American submarines and destroyer escorts.)

On December 31, 1955, General Motors became the first American corporation to make over one billion dollars in a year.

After GM's massive layoffs hit Flint, Michigan in the 1980s, budding documentary filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore focused on the company and its chairman and CEO at the time, Roger B. Smith, in his first big hit, Roger & Me (1989).

A strike began at the General Motors parts factory in Flint on June 5, 1998, which quickly spread to five other assembly plants and lasted seven weeks.

At one point GM was the largest corporation ever in the United States, in terms of its revenues as a percent of GDP. In 1953 Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often garbled when quoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was the one of the largest employers in the world – only Soviet state industries employed more people.

In May 2005, Standard & Poor's downgraded GM's credit rating to junk bond status. See below under financial woes. On April 4, 2005, General Motors sold its Electro-Motive Division to Greenbriar Equity Group LLC and Berkshire Partners.

General Motors Hughes Electronics

Hughes Electronics was formed in 1985 when Hughes Aircraft was sold by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to General Motors for $5 billion. General Motors merged Hughes Aircraft with its Delco Electronics unit to form GM Hughes Electronics (GMHE). The group then consisted of:

• Hughes Aircraft
• Delco Electronics
• Hughes Space and Communications
• Hughes Network Systems
• Hughes Training

In August 1992 GM Hughes Electronics purchased General Dynamics' Missile Systems business. In 1994 Hughes Electronics introduced DirecTV, the world's first high-powered direct broadcast satellite service. In 1995 Hughes Electronic's Hughes Space and Communications division became the largest supplier of commercial satellites. Also in 1995 the group purchased Magnavox Electronic Systems from the Carlyle Group. In 1996 Hughes Electronics and PanAmSat agree to merge their fixed satellite services into a new publicly held company, also called PanAmSat with GM Hughes Electronics as majority shareholder.

In 1997 GM transferred Delco Electronics to its Delphi Automotive Systems business. Late in the year the defense operations of Hughes Electronics (Hughes Aircraft and missile business) were merged with Raytheon.

Hughes Space and Communications remained independent until 2000, when it was purchased by Boeing and became Boeing Satellite Systems.

In 2000, the remaining parts of Hughes Electronics: DirecTV, DirecTV Latin America, PanAmSat and Hughes Network Systems, were purchased by NewsCorp and renamed The DirecTV Group. Newscorp sold PanAmSat to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) in August 2004.

Corporate structure and issues

Current members of the board of directors of General Motors are: Percy Barnevik, Erskine Bowles, John Bryan, Armando Codina, George Fisher, Karen Katen, Kent Kresa, Ellen Kullman, Philip Laskawy, E. Stanley O'Neal, Eckhard Pfeiffer, and Rick Wagoner (chairman).

Rick Wagoner is also the chief executive officer of the company (since June 1, 2000), succeeding John F. Smith, Jr.

Social policies

General Motors was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

Due to its highly compensated workforce GM has the highest health care and labour costs in the industry, and some analysts have criticized the company for this.

Subsidies

In March 2005, the Government of Canada "gave C$200 million to General Motors for its Ontario plants, and last fall it awarded C$100 million to Ford Motor Co. to expand their Canadian auto production, provide jobs and contribute to the economy," according to Jim Harris. With additional subsidies promised to non-North American auto companies like Toyota, Premier Dalton McGuinty said the money the province and Ottawa are pledging for the project is well-spent. His government has committed C$400 million, including the latest Toyota package of C$125 million, to the province's automobile sector, which helped finance $5 billion worth of industry projects.

Marketing problems

In 2004, GM redirected resources from the development of new sedans to an accelerated refurbishment of their light trucks and SUVs for introduction as 2007 models in early 2006. Shortly after this decision, fuel prices increased by over 50 percent and this in turn affected both the trade-in value of used vehicles and the perceived desirability of new offerings in these market segments. The current marketing plan is currently to extensively tout these revised vehicles as offering the best fuel economies in their class (of vehicle).

GM has over time greatly blurred the distinctions between its own divisions. These divisions were once each targeted to specific market segments and each vehicle (despite some shared components) exibited distictive styling and to some extent technologies.

Before 1955:

• GMC Truck - produced strictly utilitarian products over a wide range of vehicle capacities
• Chevrolet - an entry-level brand offering high utility at low price, with some light trucks and panel vans
• Pontiac - a brand that sold solid, quiet vehicles, attractive to a modest and reserved lower middle class
• Oldsmobile - a leading technical innovator with the first production automatic transmission this eventually became the performance division, introducing a powerful overhead-valve "Rocket" V8 in the early 1950s
• Buick - a more expensive and luxurious brand for the middle class (the "doctor's car") with four models - the small body/engine Special and Super and the larger Century and Roadmaster, each emphasizing a soft ride, upscale interior, and in the late 1940's an available smooth automatic transmission.
• Cadillac - the "standard of luxury", with large production competition only from rival Packard

In 1955, Pontiac became somewhat performance-minded, rivaled by some specific Buick models (the Century for example), completing the evolution in the early and mid 1960's with the Bonneville and the GT0, with Oldsmobiles later becoming soft, comfortable, and (for larger families) practical vehicles.

By the late 1960s, most of GM's vehicles were built upon common platforms and in the 1970s, began to use nearly identical body panel stampings, differing only in internal and external trim items.

During the 1980s, in response to the growing popularity of European sports sedans, GM would introduce the compact Cadillac Cimarron, a rebadged Chevrolet Cavalier. The Cimmaron would quickly become derisvely labled as the "rich man's Chevrolet".

The popularity of the SUV would motivate GM to introduce rebadged SUVs to most divisions, such as the Buick Rainier and the Cadillac Escalade.

Critics have suggested that this progressive blurring of well defined brands has been a large contributor the late 20^th and early 21^st century market failures of GM.

Financial woes

In April 2005, General Motors posted a US$1.1-billion loss, for the first quarter of that year. Its debt was also downgraded to junk bond status. GM announced plans to cut 25,000 jobs in the United States, and included plans to shut down one of the Oshawa, Ontario, plants by 2008.

By November 2005, within the first nine months of the year, GM had posted a near $4 billion loss. On November 21, 2005, GM had announced a revised plan of increased cuts. These cuts went from 25,000 to 30,000 employees, or 9% of its labor force. GM also increased the number of plant closings. Originally, the company planned eight plant closings; the new plan calls for the closing of twelve facilities.

In December, 2005, Standard and Poor's further downgraded GM bonds to "B", with the observation that it is "now dubious" whether the new line of SUVs and trucks would return GM's North American auto business to profitability (WSJ US edition, Dec 13, 2005, p. A3).

On December 21, 2005 Toyota Motor Corp announced that it would produce 9.06 million vehicles for 2006. Analysts estimate that GM will only produce around 8.825 million cars for 2006, giving up the title of the world's largest auto producer. GM has held the title for 74 consective years without a doubt. However, GM's Wagoner is confident that GM will remain #1.

Plant locations

The plants scheduled to be closed include (source: General Motors Corporation):

Assembly plants	Location	Closing	Products	# Employees
Moraine Assembly (3rd shift)	Ohio	2006	Mid-size SUVs	4,165
Oklahoma City Assembly	Oklahoma	Early 2006	Mid-size trucks and SUVs	2,734
Lansing Craft Centre	Michigan	Mid-2006	Chevrolet SSR roadster	398
Oshawa Car Assembly No. 1 (3rd shift)	Ontario	Mid-2006	Mid-size sedans	3,600
Spring Hill Manufacturing Line 1	Tennessee	Late 2006	Saturn Ion sedan and coupe	5,776
Oshawa Car Assembly No. 2	Ontario	2008	Midsize sedans	2,700
Doraville Assembly	Georgia	2008	Crossovers and minivans	3,076

Production facilities	Location	Closing	Products	# Employees
Lansing Metal Center	Michigan	2006	Metal fabricating	1,398
Portland Distribution Center	Oregon	2006	Parts distribution	95
Saint Louis Distribution Center	Missouri	2006	Parts distribution	182
Pittsburgh Metal	Pennsylvania	2007	Metal fabricating	613
Ypsilanti Processing Center	Michigan	2007	Parts processing	278
St. Catharines Engine	Ontario	2008	Engine/Transmission parts	1,699
Flint North 3800	Michigan	2008	Engines	2,677

Assembly plants	Location	Closing	Products	# Employees
Scarborough Assembly van plant	Ontario	1993	vans	2,700

For the first time ever, in 2004 the total number of cars produced by all makers in Ontario exceeded those produced in Michigan. GM officials cited profitability of their Oshawa, Ontario, plant in refusing to distribute the job losses.

Alternative vehicles

General Motors has long worked on alternative-fuel vehicles, but has repeatedly failed to deliver them in a profitable way. The company was the first to use turbochargers and was an early proponent of V6 engines in the 1960s, but quickly lost interest as the muscle car race took hold. They were also an early licensee of Wankel engine technology, even developing the Chevrolet Monza around the powerplant, but abandoned the alternative engine configuration in view of the 1973 oil crisis. In the 1970s and 1980s, GM pushed Diesel engines and cylinder deactivation technologies to disastrous results.

In 1996, GM introduced the EV1, the first modern mass-produced electric car. Despite the positive publicity generated by this vehicle, the company never spread the technology beyond California and Arizona, and pulled the plug on the program in 2003.

GM was also an early innovator in hybrid vehicle development, building Diesel-electric trains since the 1930s and busses since the 1990s, but did not introduce a hybrid passenger car until 2006. Their earlier hybrid pickup truck was such a mild application of the technology that many criticized it for being not a hybrid at all. The 2006 Saturn VUE Green Line will be the first hybrid passenger vehicle from GM, but it too is a mild design.

See also

• Chevrolet
• GMC
• Cadillac
• Hummer
• Buick
• Oldsmobile
• Pontiac
• General Motors streetcar conspiracy
• List of GM platforms
• List of GM engines
• List of GM factories
• List of GM VIN codes
• GM vehicles by brand
• EPA 2004 fuel economy report (General Motors)
• General Motors Acceptance Corporation

External links

• Official Website
• GMAC Financial Services
• GMability, GM's corporate responsibility site
• GM's K-12 education site
• GM's Fastlane Blog
• Corporate history
• General Motors Holden VL Turbo
• Cheers & Gears GM Enthusiast forum
• GMInsidenews GM Enthusiast forum
• GM picture galleries

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