GM Destroys Everything for Good

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/business/07quality.html?ref=business New York Times: March 7 2010. With the recent recall of the near 8 million Toyota vehicles due to an ‘acceleration problem’, American businesses have an opening to gain market holdings. To do so, companies like Ford and GM, largely seen as inefficient and out of touch, must reconstruct their image. Granted, with so large a recall of the world’s most reliable car manufacturer, a shift towards American companies could be predicted and expected. The goal here, however, is to increase the percentage of newcomers over a longer period of time. What has GM done to promote this new shift? It has paid groups of people to destroy its cars. They crash them, shatter them, set them on fire, and speed them into walls. Unlike safety tests, though, GM is looking to understand why some of its cars (It had recalled 1.3 million earlier this week) just plain stopped working. This step forward on safety at this precise time creates another obstacle for Toyota to deal with, on top of the Congressional hearings. The importance is largely stock based. GM and Ford, who is implementing a like policy in the coming months, have long held the stigma that comes with accepting billions of dollars of public bailout funds. This flub at Toyota, if properly taken advantage of, could remove that dark mark and provide one more stone on the road to American ascendancy in car manufacturing.