@59StarChief “and dismantling the old Alfred Sloan model.”
You can’t be serious! You’re digging back nearly 100 years for a reason to have kept Pontiac with the tired and profoundly outdated Sloan Ladder?!
The socio-economics and socico-political dynamics of the last 100 years have changed dramatically. The Sloan Ladder precludes that EVERYONE is going to be a millionare by the time they are 50, or even become a millionare at all at any age. Having GM stick to an inflexable system for the vacious sake of “tradition” would have killed GM sooner; Pontiac should have gone years sooner.
What’s more, the Sloan Ladder becomes more and more unworkable with changing consumer tastes and external market conditions. Nowadays, big barge cars aren’t fashionable; something that may have been different in the 1950’s when the Sloan Ladder may have had a use.
Today, no luxury automaker wants to be like Lincoln. They want to pursue the ever-changing consumer tastes, not be like Lincoln and announce “THIS TOWN CAR IS THE DEFINITION OF LUXURY”. Reason being is because automakers don’t set the standard of luxury, consumers do; and they brands that best reflect those impressions of luxury in the consumer’s eye wins.
Something you don’t have to worry about in 1912 America as nobody thought of oil as finite. The Sloan Ladder ignores external market conditions as it was never considered and this not seen as a threat. Try selling a luxury car (not an SUV) today without diesel, a small 4-pot, hybrid system, or a meager V6. None of those powertrains are considered “sporty” by “Pontiac loyalists”, and some will say that they don’t fit within the Sloan Ladder because they seem “like a step back”; that they aren’t moving in a linear “onward and upward” manner.
Right, and luxury cars with those features can’t stay on the lot long enough.
To hell with the Sloan Ladder.
