Saab Turns Back The Wrong Clock
Today’s WSJ ($) tells us that GM has revolutionary! dynamic! unique! plans to turn its Saab division around — they will:
- Introduce a ‘crossover’ SUV in 2007 … following only the Chrysler Pacifica, Nissan Murano, Mercedes R Class, Volvo XC90, and about twenty more …!
- Make a hybrid!
- Intro a new ad campaign!
If that kind of original thinking can’t turn around the division, what can?
All these rote solutions ignore the real problem with Saab — that it’s owned by GM. That has meant throwing out distinctive styling and unique cars like the hatchback speedster Saab 900, and making every vehicle in the line look like a Chevy. Don’t just take it from us; listen to the WSJ:
Saab long was known as an offbeat maker of quirky, sporty hatchbacks. … A few years ago, Saab redesigned its top-selling model, the 9-3, dropping its hatchback and turning it into just another upscale sedan. Since then, Saab’s image has faded as sales stagnated, while sales of other luxury and performance brands such as Lexus and BMW soared.
Even the new ad campaign is unoriginal. The WSJ reports:
To boost lagging sales, General Motors Corp.’s Saab brand is looking backward — to its aviation roots. Founded as an airplane maker in Sweden in 1937 by 16 aircraft engineers, Saab in a new advertising campaign claims “their spirit lives on.” The campaign, to begin Sunday, will use television, print media and the Internet and will introduce a new tagline, “Born From Jets.”
Here’s a scene from one of the new ads:
Look familiar? This is from 1969:
(larger size here)
Even the advertising is derivative! And deceptive — if any “spirit” lives on at Saab, it’s a malevolent corporacracy.* (… but think of the money they saved on the creative!)
GM has been underperforming its competitors, and at some point it becomes evident that management and their by-the-numbers strategies are the problem. The collapse of Saab helps make the case. GM needs to only need to look across town for confirmation that they have the un-Midas touch: Volvo has been a success at Ford. But that’s because Volvos don’t look like Tauruses; their Volvo-ness, including their prized reputation for safety, lives on. If GM had bought Volvo instead of Saab in 1990, you can bet that by now we’d be writing about the failure of that brand.
If GM wants a real product strategy, they should throw out the one they have, and try to make Saabs again.
—
We posted this in March: General Motors Announces Plan to Drag Down Its Brands. Guess we were right.
* my newly invented word; I’ll take suggestions for alternate spellings!
Technorati Tags: general motors, gm, saab, volvo
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October 21st, 2005 at 4:50 pm
Remember the Saab Sonnet? So it didn’t sell a lot here but it was light-weight low CoF and had overhead cams and fiberglass body unibody cast aluminum wheels rack-and-pinion steering and front disc brakes.
What the hell was GM doing back then - still solid-axle pushrod Detroit Iron pigs, massive cars that beat the asphalt down and the world quaked in fear (Jimmy Carter anyhow): the ugly-nose GrandAm, the behemoth Toronado, the humongous battle-carriers Olds Ninety Eight and Delta 88. Even the ‘Vette was a bloated pig, and Ford gave us the barf-o-rama MustangII… Sheesh.
November 11th, 2005 at 12:44 am
Its sad to see what GM has done to Saab. The commoditization of what were once decent brands to sameness is pretty poor product management imho. Sure, it saves them money to make everything on identical platforms, but rather than doing it from the top down, they could look at bottom up changes. Having 4 different fuel pumps on the same engine and chassis is quite ludicrous, especially when such changes cause minor differences in mounting configuration, and other minutia. As a friend said, when one GM guy goes on vacation, someone else steps in, and picks the first part they could find in their mrp system, rather than striving to minimize BOM variation. By reducing peice part variation, they could still save a ton of money, without ruining the cosmetic and performance appeal which is all too common when you are trying to reach the lowest possible price across a wide range of brands.
As an FYI to Keith in mtn view, the Ford V4 used in most of the Sonnet’s was not an overhead cam engine, but was popular and robust enough to be manufactured as late as 1995 for Ford’s industrial division.