General Motors: A Brand Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Why is America’s biggest carmaker, General Motors, suddenly quitting Europe, dumping the German Opel and British Vauxhall subsidiaries it has owned since the 1920s? To listen to G.M. tell it, offloading the brands in a fell swoop to PSA Group — a consortium whose owners include the French government, China’s Dongfeng Motors and the Peugeot family — makes simple, financial sense.
But any benefit of the $2.9 billion sale is worrisomely short-term, an unwelcome skid away from the passenger-car technology. Any gain for G.M. in selling off the divisions known for building some of its most sophisticated small- and medium-sized passenger cars is outweighed by the real hazard to the corporation’s longer-term health as well as that of the world’s population, who most clearly don’t benefit from greater emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants associated with larger, less fuel efficient cars.… Seguir leyendo »
