Looking Down the Road

摘要

What does GM's future hold? There's little consensus among analysts. Estimates of market share five years from now are as low as 16 percent (the bottom of the range from Crowe Chizek's Erich Merkle) and as high as 25 percent or more (the top of the range from the Center for Automotive Research's David Cole). GM's share is now 21 percent, and most analysts think it will stabilize at 20 to 21 percent. All agree that Chevrolet and Cadillac are the cornerstone brands. In fact, at some point the other brands "are going to become irrelevant," says Merkle. "Pontiac and Buick already have." But killing Oldsmobile cost GM a huge amount of money-$2 billion by one estimate-and the company may not want to go that way again. The "non-GM" GM brand, Saturn, is struggling to redefine itself. GM is no longer pouring money into the unit the way it did in the '90s, and AutoTrends' Joe Phillippi says that with some of Saturn's products so close to Chevy's, "Saturn looks expendable."