It still has a dozen today around the world

This is called the swan song. That supposed wonderful animal entonnerait before dying. The Greeks in talking already of the time of Socrates. The allocation of the envied title of European car of the year in the Opel Insignia could well be a modern version. Ironically, in this ranking, the subsidiary of General Motors exceed of one hair another American in distress, Ford.

But it is already too late. Most analysts focused on the accounts of the number one world of the automobile are categorical: it will not. A company which has need of $ 11 billion to operate, has lost seven in the last quarter, can no longer borrow and has more cash that 16 billion is close to the end. unimaginable. The largest manufacturing company in the world that would evaporate the year of its one hundred years.

Why Apparently because the Detroit giant is taken between an oil crisis resulting in collapse its main source of profit in the United States, sales of large 4 4, and an economic crisis which prevents find the lower dollar to complete its purpose of months.

But this economic trap is only the front tip of the iceberg. The reality is more profound. General Motors is collapsing under its own weight, as a black hole, carrying everything around him in his own contraction, neighbours, affiliated... And also a certain idea of America. Rather than Sarah Palin to Barack Obama. A huge country, rural lifestyle and the inordinate ambition where oil flows in streams, where one takes his truck to buy his bread and take their children to school. In a fascinating article in the magazine "Futurible" (1), the Economist Michel Drancourt sees the decline of a world and the transition to a new cycle dominated by developing countries and environmental constraints. At the peak of his form, in the 1960s, the firm was the largest employer in the world behind the Red Army (and perhaps the French National Education) with nearly one million employees. It in claims less than 250,000 today and has lost nearly 70 billion dollars over the past four years. The roots of evil are deeper than the current cyclical situation.

The truth is that GM did not reinvent itself when there was still time, as did Toyota and Volkswagen, because its size and power prevented him to respond. Perhaps its culture also. Born officially in 1908, year of release of the Ford T, General Motors is the antithesis of his cousin of the Great Lakes. Its founder, William Carpo during, is an adventurer business. Fortune in stagecoaches, he started to collect motor brands: first Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet. Sacked, returned by the window, it is definitively excluded in 1920, he mounts a competing manufacturer, is ruined by the crisis of 1929 and finally Manager of a bowling alley in Flint, the heart of GM in Michigan.

Since the tumultuous start, General Motors has ceased to be a collector of marks. It still has a dozen today around the world. That is why, in contrast to Ford, with its unique brand and its unique model (T, black), the company will invent the marketing segmentation: for each market, each stock model and its price. The rich in Cadillac, the smaller Chevrolet. The author of the development will be an engineer from MIT, Alfred Sloane, who will bring, in addition to his marketing science, sense of organization. A rationalization in the extreme intended to offset the collapse of the marks. This will be the decisive comparative advantage of General Motors that it will keep for decades. Thus armed, the group can conquer of the world: 1925, acquisition of the British Vauxhall; 1929 Opel German. It is world number one as early as 1931.

The war was going to complete the work. Always with the same combination winning industrial rationalization and diversity trade, both vertical (range) and horizontal (all countries). As often, it took a profound change of the landscape, the oil price shocks and the arrival of foreign competition, then to highlight the Detroit giant aging. Osteoarthritis of the bureaucracy was implied in all the workings of the empire. The organization without fault in the service of international expansion became uncontrolled development, accumulating strata à le fur et à mesure d' a policy of acquiring all bearings: computer services, auto, aerospace equipment, dream of universality of billionaires. At the time, the company distracted from its core business, leaving large segments of activity to competition.

Industrial rationalization, it, turned in the arms of iron with the UAW Union which led the company to accept exorbitant salaries and social charges. Today more than retired twice GM as assets and payroll cost 1,500 dollars more per car that those Japanese implanted on American soil.

Finally, endless segmentation and the accumulation of brands have reached their limits. The models are cannibalized, as, as they come from different businesses, synergies, for example between Opel and GM, are more and more low.

Of course these issues are identified for a long time and the last CEO dated, Rick Wagoner, its time to restructure the company to adapt it to the new. Since his arrival, he orchestrated the removal of 80,000 jobs and closed very many factories. But these restructurings perpetual, little challenging and very expensive, always arrive too late and soon new calling in a climate of continual price war. That's why the current crisis made that precipitate the moment of the great explanation.

Merrill Lynch analysts call this the "big bang" (2). Chrysler is already dying for them, and GM is the next on the list. A passage under the bankruptcy plan, almost inevitable, will lead to painful restructuring and a dismantling of the empire for the benefit of the last survivor to be Ford. Then the US market, which remains the largest in the world, may start on a healthier basis. Dynamism will return, even if it will impose a new redistribution of the cards with cars, may be different. In this area, GM had all relied on the Volt, electric sedan, scheduled to come out in 2010. But this instrument of winback arrives too late for the GM empire. The Swan will have finished singing.