Editorial: General Motors Zombie Watch 2: Still On the Fritz

Sorry to bang on about Fritz Henderson. But, well, there he is. Again. Still. With every passing post-C11 day, the GM CEO is sealing his position as the “Uncle Walt” of the federal automotive bailout. With every news conference, media suck-up and, now, congressional inquiry, it’s increasingly clear that Government Motors’ masters aren’t going to give GM’s mustachioed public face the old heave-ho anytime soon. Or, more accurately, soon enough. Let’s face it: the Presidential Task Force on Autos should have sent Fritz his walking papers on the same day they defenestrated his mentor: GM’s last CEO. In and of itself, this failure to excommunicate is enough to abandon all hope of the zombie carmaker’s resurrection (which is an inherently ridiculous idea anyway). Drilling down deeper, we hit nothing but sewage.

Since assuming the position (so to speak), Fritz has abandoned his faster, deeper, oh baby! mantra. He now has one message about “new” GM for its new owners (that’s you!): leaner, greener, stronger, smarter. Astute readers will notice that this is actually four messages, only the first of which makes any sense.

Leaner? That’s what happens when your market share collapses like a dwarf star. Spinning GM’s formerly bloated now emaciated soon to be lifeless corpse as some kind of egg-white eating athlete fools no one save GM’s own corporate flunkies (nothing new there). Americans equate large with successful. Why shouldn’t they?

Greener? Who gives a shit? I know that American industry, the MSM and public school teachers have been selling “green” this, that and the other thing for nearly a decade. But I reckon anyone who wants a “green” automobile is driving a Prius. And that’s pretty much that. Placing “greener” as new GM’s number two priority smacks of financially fatal, congress-pleasing political correctness.

Stronger? Does Fritz seriously expect US consumers to consider buying one of its products—or, more to the point, not not consider buying one its products—because $50 billion worth of taxpayer subsidies has bolstered Government Motors’ bottom line? As a homeowner with a big ass mortgage, I’m here to say that The Mother of All Re-fis is not an indication of Government Motors’ financial strength. Deficit financing, indeed.

Smarter? Anyone with a horse in this race (that’s you!) wants to know if GM’s “new” management (i.e., the old management) is going to make the same dumb-ass decisions that led it to complete collapse. Parsing the propaganda, do GM’s federally-funded spinmeisters mean smarter as in “intellectually superior” or “politically astute”? Either way, no.

The Henderson administration’s breathtaking lack of intellectual firepower was on display at yesterday’s Senate hearing re: GM dealer closures. The CEO singularly, spectacularly failed to make his case.

A smaller, more healthy dealer network reduces GM’s costs, primarily related to support we provide for information technology systems, dealer and sales person incentives, field sales, service and training, service parts, and advertising. This support costs GM roughly $1,000 per vehicle, or a multi-billion dollar expense.

Note Henderson wants a “healthy” dealer network, instead of a “profitable” one (“profit” replaces “bankruptcy” as new GM’s new “Voldemort”). Also notice that the Fritz seems be asserting that the less cars GM sells, the more money they make. When pressed on his pretzel logic, Fritz said the dealer closures would lower the aforementioned dealer costs by . . . $100 per car.

Henderson isn’t an idiot. He just plays one on TV. We can debate the wisdom of GM’s dealer cull, but showing up at The United States Senate without a compelling explanation of how his team ran the numbers leading to the politically-charged confrontation that led to the public hearing is either the height of hubris or just plain dumb. Anyway you look at this we lose.

Henderson’s squirming would be funny if someone else was paying for it. Particularly galling: Fritz began his statement with a promise of transparency and fealty to the United States taxpayer—and then resisted Senator Rockefeller’s request to turn over a list of dealers slated for closure. His rationale was almost as well engineered as a Chevy Aveo; “We’re giving them a 12-to-15-month window to decide what to do with their business.”

Crap. Now where’s the goddam list? Meanwhile, we’re forced to listen to a refrain which makes an alcoholic’s promises of sobriety seem credible. “This is our last chance to get it right,” Henderson said, and not for the first time. “To fix permanently those parts of the business that have diverted us from consistently building winning cars and trucks and the consumer experience to match.”

Crap. If only this was GM’s last chance to fix their business (you know; since the last last chance). They’ll be back, if only because their top man somehow got the idea into his head that GM was diverted from its success. In other words, we were doing everything right except what we were doing wrong. Hey, what do you expect from a dead CEO walking?

Fritz Henderson's Statement @ Yahoo! Video