GM AT 100

BOB ENGLISH

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

September 11, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT

For the better part of the past 100 years, General Motors has been the mightiest automobile manufacturer on the planet.

It's hard to imagine there are many people on this continent who, at some point during that century, didn't have their lives touched by one of the millions of cars and trucks The General's divisions have produced — the good, the bad and the ugly.

Most of the time, GM got it right — introducing technological innovations that improved the efficiency, reliability, performance and safety of the vehicles it produced. And developing models that suited the needs of its customers or allowed them to do things, or go places, in new ways.

And from time to time, it got it wrong —producing vehicles that were unsuitable, due to lack of leadership and vision (or sometimes it seems just lack of plain common sense), poor engineering, excessive bean counting or just a reluctance to change and meet new challenges.