Future of GM-Toyota NUMMI Plant Uncertain with GM Bankruptcy
By Michelle Krebs June 2, 2009
General Motors may stop building cars at a factory it owns with Toyota in California, known as NUMMI, following
the Detroit-based carmaker's bankruptcy filing Monday, Bloomberg News
reports.
The only GM product the plant builds is the Toyota Corolla/Matrix-based Pontiac Vibe, which will be eliminated as the automaker closes down the Pontiac brand.
The plant also builds the Toyota Corolla and Toyota Tacoma.
GM CEO Fritz Henderson told reporters Monday that no decision had been made on its future involvement in NUMMI but discussions with Toyota are ongoing.
NUMMI, short for New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., was established 25 years ago in a GM plant in Fremont, California, as a way for GM to learn manufacturing techniques from Toyota. A number of GM manufacturing execs have done a stint at NUMMI. Today it is the only auto assembly plant in California or the West Coast.
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Maybe Government Motors can move on to NUMMI 2.0; have Toyota move in to the RenCen so they can learn management techniques.
It does no good to learn how to set up and robotisize the plants and then build so many poorly accepted variations of a platform under exorbitant labor contracts to where a fifteen million SAAR rate is needed just to break even.
Back in the days when GM alone had more market share than the D3 has combined now, they pressed the oil industry to come up with higher octane fuel for their upcoming models. That same panache could have been used to:
1) Pressure the federal government to add/raise the federal excise tax on all foreign vehicles manufactured here, enough to offset the subsidies given by their home governments.
2) Benchmark new models above, rather than at, or almost at the competition. To wit: "Standard of the World" became "America's Standard to the World" and then "almost Honda-like".
3)Place the folks holding that filigreed piece of paper that says Certificate of Title above those holding the paper saying Certificate of Stock.
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