General Motors Swaps Out Yet Another CEO: Ed Whitacare To Step Down Sept 1st

Bloomberg is reporting that Whitacre is stepping down as CEO, but remaining Chairman of the Board of Directors.

That would make tons of sense.

GM needs a dedicated person for each position. Being Chairman & CEO of such a large corporation is extremely tough. The CEO can be responsible of the daily operations. The Chairman guides the company in a general direction with overall goals.

I think a lot of the CEOs & Board Chairmen sourced from outside of the auto industry find out that they have to be a special person to what to continue to do it long term. I'm sure after Whitacre completely leaves GM, that he'll turn up someplace else....unless he's just done with corporate life and is ready to retire.

The political bias here is just out of control. Agent009 ignores the story about GM's profit and leaves that to someone else to post, then casts this story in as bad a light as possible. Does 009 mention that Whitacre is becoming Chairman? That Whitacre has led GM to a substantial profit? Or that GM is prepping for an imminent IPO that will lead to an unwinding of the government's stake in it?

I love the passive-aggressive ending about neither Whitacre nor his replacement have executive auto industry expertise. Yeah, like that hack Alan Mullally.

I'm not sure whether this is blatant politicism, which is out of place on a car news blog, or whether it's trolling for page views by stoking political flames. Either way it's getting tiresome.

The question is just how the profits are generated. Even Chrysler can cut a profit do to radical cost cutting, but is it sustainable?

Yes, GM sales are up in core brands, but if you really look you find it is because of fleet sales to rental car companies NOT the average consumer. As we all know fleet sales create havoc with the resale.

Dear GM,

GIVE THE JOB TO BOB LUTZ ALREADY!

Sincerely,

People who like cars

@ Agent 009,

So you're saying fleet sales are a bad thing? You're saying that if you were Whitacre, and your retail sales were up 1 percent (which they were, contradicting your point above), and your staff told you that you could sell another 400,000 vehicles into the fleet market, you'd turn them down? The current darling US auto company, Ford, also sells to fleets -- in fact, in this past quarter, 35 percent of their sales were to fleets, compared to GM's 31 percent.

Or are you saying that fleet sales to rental car companies are a bad thing? It's true that a lower proportion of Ford's fleet sales -- less than half vs. two-thirds -- go to rental car companies. If you assume 49 and 67 percent, and do the math, that means that 17.1 percent of Ford's sales go to rental car companies, compared with 20.8 percent for GM. So if you want to argue that GM deserves the direct and indirect abuse you heap on it because an additional 3.7 percent of its overall sales go to rental car companies than do Ford's, be my guest. Seems weak, though.

I'm not a GM fanboy. I've never owned one of their cars in my life. I've driven Toyotas, Hondas, and currently a Ford, with which I'm quite happy. But I've been impressed with GM's cars of late, at least those I've driven as rentals. And I sure didn't believe they'd be turning this big a profit or readying themselves for an IPO this quickly. So I want to give credit where credit is due. That's it.