With apologies for language. The move by GM to the Nasdaq brought back bad memories for me and makes me extremely nervous about their future, and trust me, I want to be wrong here.
General Motors is moving its stock listing to the Nasdaq, the exchange closely associated with technology companies, and apparently wants us to think of GM as a technology company. My reaction? Bullshit. You can change the exchange where your shares trade, surround yourself with computer programmers, and talk about software until the batteries in your microphone die, but first and foremost, General Motors is an automaker. Somewhere inside the executive offices, somebody needs to put that on the wall in letters big enough to read without a subscription.
I have been down this road before, and that is why this gets under my skin. When I was Ford National Dealer Council chairman from 2000 to 2002, I fought then-CEO Jac Nasser tooth and nail over his desire to diversify Ford Motor Company. I believed Ford needed to concentrate on the business that put the blue oval on the building: making vehicles people wanted to buy, making them well, and taking care of the people who bought them. From where I sat, representing dealers who faced those customers every day, that was plenty of work to keep everybody occupied. Nasser bought dealerships, tech companies, body shops, and dot com company that he could find, even salvage yards.
I said it then, and I say it now: Technology is wonderful. I am thankful for it. Technology can make a vehicle safer, more dependable, more efficient, and more enjoyable to drive. It can help engineers solve problems that once seemed impossible. I spend enough time reviewing new vehicles to appreciate what good technology can do. But General Motors, the technology should serve the vehicle and its owner. When management becomes more excited about what else it can sell the customer than about the automobile it already sold them, I start getting nervous. Read the last line again and let it sink in.
My daddy had a way of cutting through this kind of nonsense. He told me, “Always make the main thing, the main thing.” There was no consultant’s invoice attached to that advice, no strategic presentation, and no committee needed to explain it. For General Motors, the main thing is building the best cars, trucks, and SUVs it possibly can, at prices customers will pay, with quality that gives them a reason to come back. Everything else ought to earn its place by helping accomplish that mission.
Consider the customer-data mess. GM agreed to pay $220 million to settle claims by more than three dozen states involving the sale of driving-behavior and location information associated with nearly 10.3 million drivers. The allegations involved third parties, including data brokers that passed information to insurers. Those are claims resolved through a settlement, and they should be described that way. But the business question practically asks itself: How did collecting and selling that information help GM build a better vehicle or earn a customer’s loyalty? It didn’t.
People walked into dealerships to buy transportation. Imagine finding out that information about how you used that transportation became a product somewhere along the way. There is a world of difference between using technology to warn a driver about a potential collision and finding another way to monetize the person behind the wheel. Customer trust takes years to build, and a corporate strategy that puts it at risk had better face some very hard questions.
Then there is the electric-vehicle strategy. I have no objection to GM building EVs for people who want them. Build a great one, price it competitively, and give the customer a reason to choose it. I’ve said on the show many times, my favorite EVs I’ve reviewed were made by GM. My objection is to executives getting so attached to their vision of the future that the customer’s preferences become an inconvenience. The showroom is where a corporate prediction meets somebody’s household budget, driving habits, and willingness to sign a contract. The customer gets the final vote, regardless of how enthusiastically Wall Street applauded the presentation.
GM has talented engineers, hardworking employees, extremely dedicated dealers, and customers who love its products. That is what makes this so aggravating. There is a tremendous business here worth protecting. A pickup that works hard for its owner, an SUV that serves a growing family, or a car that makes somebody smile every morning, like the C8 Corvette, can create loyalty that no corporate identity exercise or TV ad, will ever match. Give those customers dependable vehicles and stand behind them when something goes wrong. There is your business plan.
Could losing focus eventually mean the end of GM? Any company that repeatedly neglects the reasons customers choose it puts its future at risk. But moving a stock listing does not establish that GM is headed for collapse, and I am not predicting bankruptcy because somebody changed exchanges. My concern is the thinking behind the message: whether being called a technology company has become more important to management than being an outstanding automobile company.
I want General Motors to succeed. I want its dealers to prosper, its employees to have secure futures, and its customers to feel good about what they bought. That is exactly why I refuse to applaud every shiny new corporate direction as progress. Use the technology. Improve the vehicles. Listen to the people spending their money. And remember what my daddy said before another executive gets carried away explaining what business GM supposedly wants to become.
Make the main thing, the main thing. Dance with what brung ya, General Motors. Your customers are shopping for a vehicle, and you had better give them a reason to buy yours.