Detroit I can't find me I know not where is the North

His favourite hobby Mounted bulldozer, at his ranch in Texas, to "push the dust". Do not rely on Ed Whitacre, the CEO of General Motors - the third position within a year - to make the social whirl, run in smoking gala evenings or concerts for charity. Also just seen at the recent Salon in Detroit, in the alleys of Cobo Hall, which is located a few hundred metres from the headquarters of GM. And it is almost out bulldozer pushed outside, as President of the Board of Directors, Fritz Henderson, the previous Director General, a few months after the cathartic passage of the manufacturer under the Bankruptcy Act. That is to say, Ed Whitacre, which has to be confirmed to the position of CEO, after mine to seek out another candidate, is a Texan pure sugar. Not the diplomat type, not the type to make many pointed to its interlocutors.

Regardless of him that Detroit is the historical capital of the American automobile, which generated brands like Pontiac, Cadillac or Buick, which saw rise to pre-war "Fordism" or the famous "Sloan", the mother of all marketing segmentations. Detroit "I can't find me, I know not where is the North. "Apparently, there is plenty of motorways and national roads", it dropped for any comment on his city home to the local daily newspaper. The former boss of the operator ATT, sixty-eight years, that the Obama administration has released his retirement last year to chair the Board of GM, certainly found an apartment in town, but did not intend to move, preferring to multiply the trips with his native Texas.

The mercenary, who does not hide be novice in the car, will be able to get back on good global constructor former road Hear stinging comments from the administration Obama, the former headquarters of GM was, early last year, in a "denial of reality", to a haemorrhage of cash without precedent, and after having accumulated losses of 80 billion since 2005. Should continue with the same teams, or find new men able to tell his four truths "middle management" Washington chose the second option. After all, "the challenge of Ed Whitacre is not to establish specifications for future vehicles, set the group advertising campaigns or even reorganize its Engineering Department." "It must develop a form of modesty in GM to allow teams to hear that wishes to the consumer," says an editorialist of the professional journal "Automotive News". Much of the serious difficulties of the group takes its culture, often described as bureaucratic, slow to respond face to customers, particularly developments more fuel-efficient and less polluting engines.

Another point of passage required on the "road book" CEO: restore confidence in the Directorate, after a particularly turbulent period. "This place has need of stability," recently agreed Ed Whitacre, by estimating embody it better than a newcomer. His plan is simple: to return to profit as quickly as expected, reimburse some 8 billion of public lending in the United States and the Canada, and return on the stock market, if possible by the end of the year. A tough challenge, given the gloom of the American automobile market, which could approach the 11.5 million new registrations this year, far the 16 to 17 million units that constituted its cruise regime before the crisis.

While GM has just under the bar of the 20 of market share, only half of its relative weight of 1984, regain ground in this area seems take for the moment the mission impossible. The group comes to terminate many contracts of concessionaires and disposed of its lowest marks, Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac and Saab, which will deprive him of additional volumes month end. Not really the expansion policy that Ed Whitacre had printed in ATT and its historical ancestors (Southwestern Bell, now SBC). There, he had his market among the "baby bells", leading seven acquisitions in a decade, to make the group a national champion of the phone. Expertise that appears for the time being off-topic in Detroit.