Snaptu: Bad design the driving force behind GM's malaise

The reliance of GM on bloated SUVs and banal sedans has steered the carmaker into the slow lane since its heyday in the 50s and 60s

When and why did General Motors slot into reverse gear? How did this weather vane of the US economy become a car crash of a corporation? Debates will doubtless rage for years to come. The immediate cause, or one of them, appears to be the GM's relatively new-found, and ultimately ill-advised, dependence on SUVs. These pumped-up gas-guzzlers have been driving on borrowed time ever since they became popular in the early 1990s.

Sales of GM SUVs fell by 30% last year as fuel prices rose; they had been the most profitable cars in the corporation's global line-up. From 1931 to 2007, GM had been the automotive industry's global leader, a five-star general; today, bankrupt, it is about to be bailed out by the Federal government with a little help from the Canadians.

Although GM did begin investing in small, or smaller, cars in the US at much the same time as SUVs hit the big time, they have never been as attractive as the Japanese opposition. Well, would you choose a GM Saturn over a Toyota or Honda? Somehow, it's hard not to feel that GM's designers have never really had their heart in the idea of truly compact cars. When we think of the glory days of GM, it's the big, fast and magnificently flashy muscle cars of the 50s and 60s that still roar to mind with the burbling sound of mighty V8 engines throbbing in our ears, and tyre-screeching films starring Steve McQueen in our eyes.

Think of great GM design, and think of Bill Mitchell's sensational, shark-like 1963 Corvette Stingray, or his peerless 1963 Buick Riviera. Mitchell's predecessor at head of styling at GM was the legendary Harley Earl, who gave us concept cars, like the 1958 Firebird III, that spoke of the space age, and the outrageously finned Chevrolets and Cadillacs of the late 50s. Elvis Presley and senior Soviet apparatchiks loved them. Even Che Guevara drove, badly, around revolutionary Cuba in a metallic green Harley Earl Chevy. Clearly what was good for General Motors was not necessarily good for the US.

GM's current range, with the exception of glamorous, if questionable, sports cars like the latest Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, make glum viewing. Enormous SUVs and tank-like vehicles like the Hummer compete for showroom space with banal, small sedans. Some of the bigger "light trucks" and SUVs, like the Chevrolet HHR, look as if they have been inflated with tyre pumps and injected with large quantities of lard. Nearly all these machines look as if they could lose weight. They have truly become too big for anyone's, including GM's, good.

While some of us will still glance admiringly, or pop-eyed, at a 1930 V16 Cadillac, a Bill Mitchell Buick Riviera or a Harley Earl Chevrolet Impala, a leaner, cleaner GM can, ultimately, only ever be good for all of us.

* General Motors

* Automotive industry

* US economy

* Global economy

* United States

* Design

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | M...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/01/general-motors-bankruptcy-design

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