The giant car maker reached its peak in the 50 `s, when it accounted for 20% of the GDP of United States ! Since the first oil crisis in the late 60 `s, it has been declining gradually. Not only the domestic market share is declining, it is also no longer a technology leader (the Cadillac was once regarded as the world `s standard). Moreover, the image of the five brands are getting dated, as shown by the rising average age of buyers.  

The biggest invention of GM, also the reason of today s decline, is undoubtedly "badge engineering", or kindly speaking, "platform sharing". The headquarters develops a single platform for the 5 brands, with a limited choice of engine and equipments. All the important dimensions are fixed, all with the same suspension design (just minor revision in geometry, spring / damping rate could be altered). As a result, those cars perform and feel too similar to one another. Brand images are therefore not as strong as the company suggests. In theory, the 5 brands have their own targets : 

Chevrolet : builds bread and butter cars for the majority and young customers 
Pontiac : emphasis sporty performance and feel 
Buick : executive cars 
Oldsmobile : also executive cars, but for younger buyers who used to buy foreign imports.  
Cadillac : top-end luxurious cars for boss 

In fact, this ends up with Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac are all relying on customers averaging 60 years old. The Oldsmobile, as its name suggests, fail to attract younger people from buying the more elegant and high-tech Lexus or German cars although a lot of effort has been made. The same for Cadillac, which is still regarded as the cheaper alternative to Mercedes and BMW. 

The problem is, GM did too little to differentiate the cars of different brands. Besides, it did not use the saving from platform sharing to make the basic platforms as good as possible. Lastly, its top management is too reluctant to try new ideas and always lags behind the competition. When competitors applied independent rear suspension, it still used live axle; when it followed by introducing semi-trailing arms suspension, the rivals were already using multi-link. It is also the last of the Big Three to realise the great potential of Sport Utility Vehicles. There is a saying that the top management guys never visit the factories or meet the lower level engineers and managers. They make all the decisions in their office locating at the top level of the multi-story headquarters building. Finish their work and take the private elevator to the private car park and drive home.  

Since the founder Billy Durant, GM is always managed by financial experts rather than engineering or production experts. The platform sharing policy is undoubtedly favoured by financial guys, including Lopez, who quit GM in the early 90 s and inspired the platform sharing strategy for Volkswagen. However, the German car maker is headed by an ex-engineer, Ferdinand Piech, who knows cars well enough to eclipse the engineering chief of GM. That is the difference between GM and VW. 

Although the financial guys deteriorated the products and brand image, they helps GM earning money from buying foreign car makers (e.g. Opel, Vauxhall, Suzuki, Isuzu, Saab and minority share in Daewoo) and setting up joint ventures. Otherwise GM would have lost its top spot long ago. 

The European operation (GME) consists of Opel, Vauxhall and Saab. Until now their development and production operate independent from the Detroit headquarters, although a few signs indicate more cooperation in the future, such as the global four cylinder engines and the development of Saturn L-series by Opel. 

Holden is the Australian arm of GM. It has half independent R&D and makes just one model - Commodore - with engines supplied by Detroit. It will be more important because the next Commodore platform will be the basis of various US models. 

GM also has invested into Japanese truck / SUV maker Isuzu and small car specialists Suzuki, as itself is too weak in these sectors. Since the late 80's, Isuzu does not build passenger cars anymore and rely on SUV and truck. By supplying to GM, it will soon become the largest diesel engine maker in the world. In late 1999, it acquired 20% Fuji Heavy Industries, the maker of Subaru. 

The Saturn division was set up in the late 80 `s as an ambitious project to strike back the Japanese small cars import. It applied production and sales method different to the 5 conventions divisions. However, after a decade it seems that the mission is not yet accomplished before sales is declining. The reasons are : 1) small car market is reducing; 2) the Japanese is too strong to be beaten by GM. Therefore, Saturn spread its range to cover mid-size cars also.

1998 sales figures for individual US brands : 
Chevrolet : 876,000 cars and 1,550,000 trucks (best seller : Cavalier, Malibu, Siverrado pickup) 
Pontiac : 477,000 cars and 59,000 trucks (best seller : Grand Am) 
Buick : 400,000 units (best seller : LeSabre and Century) 
Oldsmobile : 262,000 cars and 68,000 trucks (best seller : Intrigue) 
Cadillac : 182,000 units (best seller : DeVille) 
Saturn : 271,000 cars (1997 figure) 
GMC : 468,000 trucks (best seller : Sierra)

However, the GM story started with another brand, Buick. David Buick established it in 1899 and went into financial trouble in 1903. Carriage maker Billy Durant took over it then and started absorbing other car makers. This brilliant businessman has no engineering background, but his financial know-how helped him to win battles after battles. He saw there were too many car makers rose and fell in America. He believed a consortium of several car makers would provide a stable finance without being risked by the poor performance of individual models. He also pioneered the concept of component sharing among the brands which reduce the price of parts and cost of engineering. 

Therefore Durant acquired the Oldsmobile in 1909 and created General Motors. Then the targets went to Oakland Motor (1909) which was then renamed to Pontiac after a popular model. The largest purchase was the famous Cadillac (also 1909). At last finished the shopping by taking over Chevrolet in 1916. By 1920, GM had grown 8 times compare with four years ago. Durant lost his post during the post-WWI recession. 

The famous GM building was completed in Detroit in 1920 as a symbol for American industry. Since then the research and development of cars were centralised, with a budget and facilities that made the rest of the world jealous. GM became a world leader for mass production technology, such as the mass production six-cylinder engine, high compression V8, automatic transmission, air conditioning, electric windows, safety glass, fast-drying paint etc. By 1927, GM surpassed Ford to be the world s largest car maker, thanks to its variety of model ranges, in contrast to the one-car policy of Ford. 

Since the 20 `s, GM adopted a clear pricing policy - each divisions and each models were assigned with a price range and target customers to avoid internal competition. On the other hand, GM started a so-called "revolution" in car styling. It employed the industry `s first stylist, Harley Earl, to help diversify the image of its wide model ranges. He shaped cars according to taste and fashion instead of functions, created the idea of "model year" by facelifting cars every year. Like the fashion wear, this increased the public interest to change cars frequently, hence increased sales. The situation went too exaggerate to the extent that the cars in the 50 `s had ultra-long trunk and tailfins inspired by aircraft fighters. During the "good old days", the wealthy American public could afford it, thus pushed General Motors to its peak. 

After the peak, GM started a trend of "muscle car" with Pontiac GTO. That pushed the American market to another extreme - everyone pursued for big block V8s with up to 7 litres capacity and 400 horsepowers. In response to Ford `s popular pony car, Mustang, Chevy Camaro and Ponitac Firebird was born with nearly equal success. All American car makers succeeded to achieve fire-breathing performance in a low price with big but old-tech V8 produced in mass amount. The cars also grew too irreasonably big ("size does matter", as they said) and thirsty to be exported. Handling were ruined by the size and weight as well as the lack of concern in suspension and chassis design. The whole American motor industry was set on fire and seemed to crazy in the eyes of European.  

The first energy crisis in 1967 punished GM (also Ford and Chrysler) heavily. But it did not learned from the lesson as the crisis disappeared quickly. However, the second oil crisis in `73 and then the third occasion in `78 were not so kind, accompany with emission regulations. The big 3 found their ignorance about small economy cars paid the price. Sales of Japanese imports surged. Chevrolet made its first so-called "compact car", Corvair, but not too "compact" by our standards. GM was in loss times to times during the 70 `s and 80 `s. In 1989, it recorded the biggest loss ever experienced by the world `s industry. Substantial cost-cutting afterwards helped it to regain profitability, but market share is declining as a result. Ford is now in the sight of retaking the number 1 spot it lost in 1927. 

Since the Mustang era, GM has been known as a bulky giant without much new ideas explored. It talked too much about reform but did too little, with the exception of Saturn. Saturn was a clean-sheet new division with its own R&D. It learned development and production methods from the Japanese and started production in a new factory in Tennessee, in 1990. However, the revolution did not gun down the Japanese imports.