GM has reported one of its most successful periods in recent history, but has the damage caused by 29 million vehicle recalls set in motion an inevitable decline? It’s been a tale of non-stop doom and gloom for General Motors as of late – a half-year tally of 29 million vehicle recalls would be enough […]
GM has reported one of its most successful periods in recent history, but has the damage caused by 29 million vehicle recalls set in motion an inevitable decline?
It’s been a tale of non-stop doom and gloom for General Motors as of late – a half-year tally of 29 million vehicle recalls would be enough to crush the average automaker. However, despite facing criminals court action and generally being panned from all angles, GM has still managed to rake in solid sales and achieve growth of 1% over the same period last year.
Could it be that GM has managed to weather all of its misgivings without so much as a scratch?
“June was the third very strong month in a row for GM, with every brand up on a selling-day adjusted basis,” said GM’s sales operations VP Kurt McNeil.
“In fact, the first half of the year was our best retail sales performance since 2008, driven by an outstanding second quarter.”
This is really the first good news to come out of GM in quite some time, having so far faced the humiliation of recalling 29 million vehicles in the USA and being accused of contributing to 13 deaths. From faulty airbags to loose ignition switches, they’ve barely put a foot right all year…or at least, so it seemed.
Sales are up year on year, but as GM’s reputation continues to falter, it remains to be seen whether trust has been or will be lost by US motorists.
“This could be a case of the death-by-a-thousand-cuts dynamic,” NBC News quotes corporate reputation expert Anthony Johndrow as saying.
“You lose resilience when your reputation is injured, and the more hits you take, the more damage you suffer. Your reputation can bounce up, but it can bounce down even quicker.”
On the other side of the fence however there are those that remain more than happy to side with GM and insist that bad publicity even on this level doesn’t seem to be making a difference.
“General Motors is resilient,” wrote AutoTrader.com’s Michelle Krebs.
“Consumers understand that the GM of today is not the GM that made the recalled cars. They are making a different product,”
“Certainly there will be a hit to the bottom line but not one GM can’t handle.”
