It appears that Washington and the unions are set to take over control at GM. This opens the hatch to some weird possibilities.
For starters, you know how governments can mess things up. Don’t be surprised if General Motors is appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a high-ranking officer, after all. At the least, he’ll be assigned a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.
That suggests the potential for some synergies. For example, the Surge would make a nice name for a new car model. There is the opportunity for cross-pollination.
This is a chance for GM to completely overhaul its marketing plans. A good starting point would be its model names. These should be chosen for their political correctness.
On second thought, the Surge sounds a little too flashy. More appropriate names might be the CARbon Neutral or the Eco-friendlymobile.
In honour of the second member of the new management team, the union, how about a product line called the Mediator. But it might have some trouble knowing which side of the road to drive on.
GM is resting a lot of its hopes on the all-electric Volt. That name’s still too sparky. Keep the “v” and go with Vegan.
To recognize the shift from gas guzzlers to bean curd and soybean gulpers, change the Cadillac brand name to the Tofu.
Hummer strikes the right note, not too loud and kind of cheery. It’s a keeper. And Saturn has a kind of space cadet feel to it that is right for this new Enterprise.
Henry Ford offered his customers their choice of colour, as long as it was black. The new GM products should only come in green.
This government-union union has all the promise of a quickie Vegas wedding. It only needs an Elvis impersonator to give it the right stamp of approval.
If none of this works, then I say let the robots run the place. They deserve a chance. Everything is supposed to be automated anyway.
If a figurehead is still needed, then pluck someone from the ranks of the crash test dummies. They look like they know what they’re doing. That way, if the business continues to be a car wreck, then nobody gets hurt.
Please join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For my first book, “Two Scoops” Is Just Right, click here.
