http://www.globeauto.com/servlet/sto...cialGlobeAuto/

Here's some of the most interesting part:


Vaughan: So is this the kind of desirable product that Lutz was sent in to build?

Wolkonowicz: It's not just desirable product. It's desirable product that's going to turn a profit for GM.

The Acadia is going to sell for the same amount of money as a Tahoe or a Yukon, but it gets better fuel economy, it drives more like a car and there's lots of profit in it. That's the important part.

I mean, I can come up with a desirable B-Class car like a Toyota Yaris or a Honda Fit, but I'm not going to make a lot of money on that.

I want to make money and the Lambdas are going to make real money. They're going to make the kind of money for GM that they used to make on full-size SUVs.

And there's another Lutz-mobile on the car side of the business where the domestics really are sucking wind.

Vaughan: The Camaro?

Wolkonowicz: Yes, the Camaro.

I'm a great believer that the reason that the domestic auto industry lost the car business is because they emasculated the American car.

What we did — and I was at General Motors in 1980 watching this happen — we looked at cars like the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, cars that in the 1980s were very successful, and we said, “Well, that's what ‘the customer' wants.” And we all turned out cookie-cutter, rationally designed, rationally sized, front-wheel-drive cars with transverse four-cylinder and small V-6 engines and every last vibration and noise that they may have emitted was removed from them.

As I said, we emasculated them. Well, one word I try never to use is “the customer.” There are many different kinds of customers. White-collar baby boomers wanted Accords and Camry's. Blue-collar baby boomers did not. They wanted something that had some snarl to it, something with real American swagger.

Vaughan: So the blue-collars are all going to buy Camaros?

Wolkonowicz: Camaro is built on Zeta, which is GM's new rear-drive platform engineered in Australia.

It will have V-8s or 6s for those who want them and it'll produce a Camaro and an Impala at Chevrolet. It'll produce a Pontiac G8 sedan and a Buick sedan, and they're all going to be built in Oshawa — which is of interest to your readers — which I think is one of the best General Motors plants in North America.

But Zeta is just the tip of the iceberg here because what Zeta is about is returning this real American swagger to cars.

 

That's a lot of cars for Oshawa. When will we see the Impala/G8/Buick? NAIAS in January? Man, seems like just yesterday I couldn't sit still because it was just around the corner and all the rumors about the Camaro were flying about.

 

One thing he's right about, Lambda is a very important program, and yet there is so little 'buzz' about it.

 

Well, if more "American swagger" is what we need, damnit I hope we get it!! (and I hope it sells )