GM vows no surrender in the sales race

GENERAL Motors has no intention of surrendering its global status as the number one car sales company.

And it plans to exploit a policy of flexible niche manufacturing, as already developed by Holden in Australia, to ensure it stays at the top of the pile.

So says GM’s North American engineering chief Jim Queen, in Melbourne this week as part of a heavyweight Detroit troupe visiting Holden.

At the head of the pack is GM product czar Bob Lutz, while also among the group is global styling chief Ed Welburn.

Speaking to the media at a press conference on Monday afternoon, Mr Queen made it clear that GM would resist to the hilt Toyota Motor Corporation’s aggressive product sales plans.

"We are not going to concede. We have been very clear that we are going to maintain our number one position from a market share stand point," he said.

"There’s not a different business strategy of maximising revenue or whatever – we are going to maintain and grow our market share globally.

"Very clearly, we are not going to concede market share to Toyota or anyone else." Toyota has recently revealed its ‘global 15’ strategy to secure 15 per cent of the world sales market by 2010. In 2003 it claimed about 11 per cent of the market, compared to GM’s 14.7 per cent.

Toyota actually claimed second place from Ford in terms of 2003 global sales in January, but now says, after recalculating its figures, that it just missed out on jumping a spot.

"Toyota is tough but the advantage we have right now is we have a lot of installed capacity, we just have to have the will to use it," Mr Queen said.

"There aren’t manufacturers that have the assets and the infrastructure that GM has in place on a global basis.

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We have in place right now what we need to do to get a lot more variants into the marketplace

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"Clearly the Toyota footprint is moving out and you will see more of a regionalisation effort by Toyota around the globe.

"But we have in place right now what we need to do to get a lot more variants into the marketplace in each of the regions, and that’s whose going to win here." Mr Queen said the days of "pumping out" 300,000 or more examples of a single car were coming to a close, and GM’s requirement now was to use its global architectures to fill as many niches as possible with models.

"If you don’t have that (300,000) world anymore then you have to fill these assembly plants up with 30,000 units or 40,000 units etcetera," he said.

"That’s why the template the (Holden) team is using down here is so powerful – distinctively different vehicles that are being worked off the same fundamental architecture." Holden has developed the VE Commodore rear-wheel drive architecture – also called Zeta – for global use and it could underpin nameplates as diverse as Chevrolet, Opel and Saab.

Other global architectures include Kappa (small rear-wheel drive), Theta (compact all-wheel drive), Delta (small front-wheel drive), Epsilon (mid-size front and all-wheel drive) and Sigma (luxury rear and all-wheel drive which the Cadillac CTS, SRX and STS are based on).