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By Root 961 0

of today’s content is useless in terms of triggering purchase decisions. Most customers want a vehicle of new, fresh, exciting appearance, with a rich, value-transmitting interior. They want a great powertrain, superb dynamics, and, obviously, safety and quality. The thought that huge advances in voice recognition or display technology or embroidered floor mats will somehow override other deficiencies (or, worse yet, “averageness”) is wrong. What focus groups say they would “really like in their next car” is not reliable because they are, when questioned, not actually paying for it. (“Talking cars” and all-digital instrument panels received high “want” ratings in their day.) The vehicles that are succeeding today (Honda, Toyota, Audi, VW) are not highly contented, or if they are, they charge for the option packs. A “base” Camry is really base!

6. Design’s role needs to be greater. Design is being “corporate-criteriaed” to death. By the time the myriad research-driven “best-in-class” package, the carryover architecture, the manufacturing wants, the non-stone chip rocker placement, the carryover sunroof module, and on and on are loaded in, and the whole thing is given to Design with the words, “Here, wrap this for us,” the ship sailing toward that dreaded destination, “Lackluster,” has already left the dock.

7. Complexity-reduction is a noble goal, but it is not an overriding corporate goal. Standardizing options for the sake of simplifying the BOM, engineering, and releasing effort, pricing, dealer stocks, etc. is very worthwhile. But it can be counterproductive if it reduces vehicle margins; i.e., the net revenue loss is greater than the demonstrated savings in the enabling disciplines. A good rule of thumb is that, in the case of an option with a significant cost, where the freestanding “take” is less than 70–75 percent, the incorporation as standard will cost money. If “priced for,” then a large proportion of customers are being asked to pay for something they don’t really want. If it’s “eaten” and not priced, we are reducing margins without enhancing value to those who don’t care for the option. My experience is that options running at 25–40 percent should remain options (perhaps grouped into packages), options running at over 75 percent should be incorporated as standard.The area between 40–75 percent requires judgment in each individual case, and a good dialog between affected parties.

8. We all need to question things that inhibit our drive for exceptional “turn-on” products. Edicts and criteria do some good; they create consistency and order, and they help someone achieve a goal that he or she feels is important. But many of our criteria are internally focused and prevent us from doing high-appeal, exciting, dramatically new products. A salesman cannot say to the customer,“It takes a bit of getting used to, I admit, but did you know that it satisfies one hundred percent of GM’s internal criteria?” We don’t want anarchy, but we do need more of a “Who says?” attitude. The focus has to be on the customer.

9. It’s better to have Manufacturing lose ground in the Harbour Report, building high net-margin vehicles with many more hours, than being best in the world building low-hour vehicles that we take a loss on. We need to recognize that everything is a trade-off, that we can’t maximize the performance of any one function to the detriment of overall profit maximization. The same goes for every discipline: A gorgeous vehicle that disappoints in quality will fail. A car incorporating every conceivable new safety technology makes no contribution to safety if it becomes unaffordable to the customer or we can’t afford to build it. A vehicle with a single-minded focus on “absence of thingsgone-wrong” will fail miserably if it is dull, unexciting, a dog to drive, and ugly. Even if it’s the best ever found by J. D. Power!

10. Remember the Bob Lutz motto: “Often wrong, but seldom in doubt.” None of us is infallible, and we all make errors. Remember baseball, where a batting average of .400 is unheard of!