Chairman Rick Wagner announced plans to close 4 truck and SUV plants Tuesday. The news does not affect the G-m plant on boxwood road in Wilmington. Work there has already been reduced to two shifts because of declining national sales.
After the announcement, Wagner faced some angry stockholders at the automakers annual meeting in Wilmington. People like Jim Dollinger, a dealer from Flint, Michigan.
"All they understand is how to cut and close and spin and pay lawyers, bankers and accountants. They don't know how to grow the business," Dollinger said.
He is among those who are not convinced rising prices at the pumps are behind the slump in sales. Dollinger said, said G-M is the worst run company when it comes to marketing and he says until the marketing changes, the downward spiral will continue.
Stockholder John Lauve added, "We need to change this company or either have the Japanese come in and run the whole place."
In response to popular foreign made, fuel efficient vehicles, GM plans to shift to making smaller cars, and this, in 2010, an electric car called the Chevy Volt. The news doesn't surprise the head of Delaware's chamber of commerce. Jim Wolfe, a former plant manager for Chrysler, predicts American-made, energy efficient cars will do well and that companies like GM will bounce back. In Wolfe's words, the auto business is very cyclical. He says everything will run well for 2 to 3 years and then the auto market will fall into a ditch for several years. Wolfe says this just happen to be that cycle now.
