Tom Guarriello discusses Toyota poised to overtake GM as the world's top carmaker, and reflects on former GM chief Bob Lutz's push for design-driven revival. He notes GM's quality has improved and trucks like the Escalade gained cultural cachet, then asks viewers directly: do you own a GM vehicle, and would you buy one?
Well, hi guys, it's Tom Guarriello. I have a question for you today about cars. I was watching CBS Sunday Morning earlier today and they had a segment about Toyota, which is about to overtake General Motors as the number one car manufacturer in the world. So Toyota's gonna sell more cars this year than General Motors does. Now, for the past, I guess about 2 years now, I've been following on my blog, I've been following the blog written by General Motors executives, and predominantly for the first year and a half written by Bob Lutz. Bob Lutz is a kind of a design legend in the automobile industry. He's been involved in lots of successful automobile designs. And about, I guess about 3 years ago now, he came over to GM to lead what he calls a design-driven renaissance at General Motors, to really try to turn GM around. You know, General Motors has come on to really hard times in the United States, all over the world as well. And Predominantly, the problems with GM had to do with the quality of their vehicles. In recent years, GM's really caught up. If you listen to a lot of reports, GM has caught up in producing better quality cars. Whether or not they're as good as Japanese or even German model cars is debatable. Some say yes, some say no. GM cars have also become more, they've become hipper. If you watch hip-hop videos, for example, you see black Escalades everywhere. Lots of bling, lots of Cristal and girls in the back. So they've become cool too. So the question that I wanna ask you is, Do you own a GM vehicle? And if you do, what's been your experience with it? What do you think of the car or the truck that you own? And secondly, if you're thinking about buying a new vehicle, are you thinking about buying a General Motors vehicle? Um, so anyway, I'd be interested in your thoughts about that. You know, there's lots and lots of stuff written in the mainstream media about things like this, but I thought we have an opportunity to talk to one another without, you know, any editorial interference, just us talking to one another about what we think. So I'd like to hear your thoughts about, about GM cars. So thanks a lot and talk to you again soon. Bye.
