How GM Can Fix Itself
By Daren Fonda
[This article contains a complex chart -- Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] Standing under a fading blue sign that says BIRTHPLACE OF THE AMERICAN V6, Allan Taylor gestures at the factory behind him and grimaces. "Everything in there is obsolete," he says of the Buick engine plant. Taylor has spent 30 years there, and at 59 he's nearing retirement. It's a good thing too, since the plant won't be running much longer. General Motors plans to shut it down in 2008, one of nine factories the company aims to close, eliminating 30,000 jobs. Taylor is surprised the plant has lasted this long. "We have to put buckets under the machines to catch the leaking oil," he says. Buick City, where he works, was once a vast manufacturing complex more than a mile in length. It's now mostly a desolate field of crushed stone surrounded by parking lots too big for GM's shrinking workforce. If you didn't know you were in Flint, Mich., you might think you were at an old Soviet factory that made nameless products no one really wanted.
GM CEO Rick Wagoner is acutely aware of his company's decaying state. He may have the toughest job in corporate America--preventing the world's largest automaker from going under. Wagoner outlined his plan last week, announcing a restructuring that will result in GM's producing 1 million fewer vehicles a year and, he hopes, saving $7 billion annually (GM's sales last year: $193.5 billion). Wagoner has been vigorously trying to crush rumors that GM will seek a bailout in bankruptcy court, following the path of troubled airlines and steel companies. "I'd like to just set the record straight here and now," he wrote in a letter to GM employees. "There is absolutely no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy."
It's a testament to how bad GM's problems are that Wagoner had to write such a letter. GM is a shell of the company that a half-century ago controlled nearly half the U.S. car market and was such a powerhouse that company executives told Congress they didn't want to cut the price of a Chevy because it might drive the competition out of business. With some 324,000 employees worldwide, GM remains a giant, influencing everything from the price of plastics and steel to the market for mortgages, through its GMAC finance division (part of which may soon be sold). Yet GM can't seem to make money in its core business, manufacturing automobiles at home. In the first nine months of this year, GM's North American operations lost $4.8 billion. Its market share has sunk from 40% in 1984 to a low of 26.1% this year.
GM's decline, which goes back to the energy crisis of the 1970s, has been accelerating lately, compounded by competition from Japanese and Korean brands, another burst of high gasoline prices, the bankruptcy of its largest parts supplier, Delphi, in Troy, Mich., and perhaps most critically, a glut of SUVs and sedans. For all those reasons, Wall Street is discounting GM's chances of survival. Bearish analysts say there's a 40% chance the company will go bust in a couple of years. "The forces working on the auto industry--not just on GM--are gigantic," says Gerald Meyers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. "GM's future is undoubtedly going to be one of shrinking."
How does GM get out of this mess without a trip through bankruptcy court, which could conceivably lead to a breakup of its storied brands? The company's problems run so deep that only a major overhaul could do the job--and then only if a smooth road lies ahead. Wagoner is getting plenty of advice about how to fix things, from cutting GM's $1.1 billion stock dividend to demanding deeper wage-and-benefit cuts from hourly workers. A confrontation over labor issues is looming, in fact, since GM's contract with the United Auto Workers (U.A.W.) expires in September 2007. Until then, Wagoner seems to be gambling that the company can stay afloat via a series of tune-ups, ranging from having workers bear more health-care costs (annual savings: $3 billion) to eliminating weak models and launching redesigned SUVs and pickups next year--and praying that high gasoline prices don't bog down the plan. Plenty of skeptics believe Wagoner's plan is too limited. "If you have an earthquake and a building falls on someone's leg and he's stuck, you amputate his leg," says Jim Matheson, a management professor at Stanford University. "That's what GM has done." Analysts say GM needs to downsize far more dramatically. Here's what auto experts believe GM will have to do to fix itself:
o INVEST IN THE FUTURE
It may sound obvious that GM needs to sell cars that people want to buy, but that's at the top of Wagoner's list of challenges. Wall Street is uneasy over GM's production plans, heavily weighted toward light trucks at a time when consumers are veering away from gas guzzlers. The overreliance on big vehicles is partly a result of bad luck. GM execs have admitted they never anticipated gas prices rising as fast as they did during the hurricane season, when a gallon of gas cost more than $3 in some regions. Yet GM relied for years on its SUV sales for profits--and underinvested in cars--which seemed smart until the bottom fell out. Says Meyers: "They made a mistake to go with the big guys." Goldman Sachs cites GM's launch of models like the 2007 Chevy Suburban as a "key negative" in Wagoner's turnaround plan, with the market for large SUVs expected to slump 8% next year. GM promises that the new models will be 10% more fuel efficient, be laden with more luxurious interiors and feature a smoother ride.
Meanwhile, GM is playing catch-up in the hot market for hybrids because it has been losing sales to Toyota and Honda. The Japanese companies began developing hybrids in the '90s, when Detroit scoffed at the technology as economically unviable. "GM's reasoning with hybrids was, Why bother when trucks are selling?" says Matheson. Toyota put hybrids on the market even when the company knew they wouldn't make money right away. "Detroit doesn't think that way," Matheson says. Both GM and Ford are coming to market with their first hybrid models, while Toyota and Honda are already selling second generations.
o CUT A NEW DEAL WITH WORKERS
To save his company, Wagoner will have to persuade the U.A.W. that what's good for GM is good for labor, even if it means shutting down plants and laying off workers. The company can't slim down easily, a legacy of earlier battles with the U.A.W. and labor deals that make it prohibitively expensive to shutter factories. What happens to a GM worker when his or her plant shuts down? Not much. Under GM's contract with the U.A.W., laid-off workers are entitled to 95% of their salary plus benefits for nearly two years. So while closing factories saves money on materials and overhead, it takes quite a while to shave the payroll and bolster the bottom line. Wagoner is expected to pressure the union to modify the severance deals when the contract is renegotiated in 2007.
What really scares Wall Street is the prospect of a Delphi strike. Goldman Sachs estimates that a Delphi work stoppage could shut down GM factories at a cost of $2 billion a month, causing GM to burn through its cash reserves at a deadly clip. "A strike could push them over the edge," says Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research. Unions representing Delphi workers have described the bankrupt company's latest offer--cutting wages from an average $27 an hour to $10.50 for production staff--as "insulting," and U.A.W. chief Ron Gettelfinger has described Delphi boss Robert Miller as a "rogue." The U.A.W. last week filed a protest in bankruptcy court over a Delphi compensation plan that would award top execs up to $500 million to stay on the job. GM, caught in the middle of the dispute, is likely to try to broker a deal.
o FIX THE RETIREMENT PROBLEM
Another legacy of GM's pact with the union is its crushing pension burden. Having shed so many workers in previous rounds of cost cutting, GM finds itself in a demographic choke hold--paying for the pensions and health care of 400,000 retirees (plus benefits for their dependents)--with a shrinking company. GM's strongest rivals, such as Toyota and Nissan, haven't gone through decades of downsizing and don't bear that lopsided burden. At GM, each U.S. worker's production has to support 2.5 retirees, adding an average of $2,200 in legacy costs to the price of a vehicle, a steep disadvantage vs. foreign manufacturers. And the fewer vehicles GM sells, the worse the ratio gets.
Wagoner is playing an actuarial waiting game, betting that as the retiree population declines, health and pension costs will fall, helping the company swing to profitability. But on Wall Street, worries about how a smaller GM will pay its retiree obligations have sent its securities plummeting. GM says it owes $89 billion to current and future retirees, and if GM's pension plan were terminated tomorrow, it would be $31 billion short, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. GM says its pension obligations are more than fully funded and it has no intention of terminating its plan. But GM may have to shoulder some of Delphi's liabilities--GM spun off Delphi in 1999. In a worst-case scenario, by GM's estimate, the tab for Delphi's 34,000 workers could hit an additional $11 billion. Without unloading its pension obligations, analysts say, GM must find a way to sell more vehicles at higher prices.
o MAKE SOME HARD CHOICES ABOUT CAR MODELS
GM could solve a lot of its problems by producing fewer cars with more distinctive differences. Since it's so costly for GM to close factories, the company has been reluctant to cut capacity, allowing vehicles to pile up almost regardless of demand and forcing GM dealers to lure shoppers with huge incentives like discounts, rebates and supercheap financing. Moreover, some of GM's models get lost in the vast fleet, which offers more than 55 models of cars, trucks and SUVs. Want a four-door sedan? Pick from 10 different models, including offerings from Cadillac, Chevy, Saturn and Saab. Industry analysts have long argued that GM needs to eliminate slow-selling models if not entire brands such as Pontiac or Buick, which even GM vice chairman Robert Lutz has described as "damaged." Overall Wagoner is cutting North American capacity 30% over the next three years, figuring that GM dealers can profitably sell 4.2 million vehicles annually. (GM is on track to sell more cars overseas than in North America for the first time this year.) But some analysts think that's overly optimistic, since foreign competitors are coming on strong.
Wagoner's strategy assumes that GM makes cars and trucks that consumers covet for their merits, which, aside from a few hot models like the new Chevy HHR, hasn't been the case. Lutz, in charge of adding zing to GM's lineup, has earned mixed reviews. While some of his babies, like the new Pontiac Solstice, have been lauded by critics, others, such as the revived Pontiac GTO, have flopped. "GM's return to prosperity depends on it offering products that consumers find attractive," says union boss Gettelfinger. Translation: it's all about designing better cars, and don't expect big concessions from the union.
One casualty of GM's lackluster sales will be a Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., where production of the Ion small car is ending in 2006. Saturn was intended to represent the dynamic, new GM. Workers agreed to salaries in lieu of hourly wages and overtime, and consumers were promised an enjoyable showroom experience (no haggling) and funky, fun cars appealing to young shoppers. Yet 14 years after the first models rolled off the line, Saturn's sales are floundering, and such signature design elements as plastic side panels have been ridiculed for looking cheap. GM is now investing heavily in the brand and is contractually bound to produce another Saturn car in Spring Hill.
But it's a bad omen for GM that the company must rely on red-tag sales and other gimmicks to move the metal, despite great strides in vehicle quality. Buick may be a stodgy brand, but in recent years it has edged Toyota in quality surveys, suggesting that if shoppers can get over Buick's grandfatherly image, they actually enjoy its wheels. "GM is building some of the best-quality cars in its history," notes industry consultant Ron Harbour. Now Wagoner has to make those cars sell--be it with edgier design, more sophisticated marketing or a combination of both, taking a cue from the revival of Cadillac.
Is Wagoner up to the task? Can an insider, who rose within GM, have the nerve to take the ruthless measures necessary to fix his ailing company? So far, GM's board is standing by its chairman's relatively cautious strategy. The same may not be said of Kirk Kerkorian, the casino mogul and billionaire who owns nearly 10% of GM shares. He has lost an estimated $390 million on his stake and has indicated he may seek board representation. Kerkorian tried to take over Chrysler, and while he isn't expected to try that with GM, he's likely to lobby for Wagoner to speed up the turnaround, if not agitate for a tougher-minded outsider to take the helm.
For his part, Wagoner seems to have lost some of his customary cockiness, sounding more defensive in public appearances. He's also driving on a narrow mountain road. Even a slight slowdown in the economy or a spike in gas prices could put him on the edge as he braces for union negotiations that may determine whether GM survives intact. If there's any solace for Wagoner, it's that he isn't the only car guy in the hot seat. Even Carlos Ghosn, chief of Nissan, the automotive turnaround story of the decade, is experiencing a sales slump, and the company has announced plans to move its North American headquarters from Los Angeles to Franklin, Tenn., to save a few bucks. The bright side for nearby Saturn workers who may soon be out of a job: at least they now know where to send a resume.
With reporting by Elisabeth Kauffman/Spring Hill, Eric Roston/Washington, Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit, Dody Tsiantar/New York