GM to Cut Midsize Car Development Spending by $1 Billion

Yowch. The machete-wielding rats on GM's listing ship have committed to cut a billion dollars from the company's global midsize car development programs by opening up the global parts bin to all, which means in a few years, nobody will be buying a hodgepodge of BLS93G6Malibu. This sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen, tossing what GM really needs — a decent, yet distinctly American Camry/Accord competitor — back into a born-from-badge-engineering blender.

They should just throw everything onto an extensible-and-shrinkable Holden Commodore platform and be done with it, much like Nissan did with its FM cars, and then replace the Cobalt and GM Cruiser HHR with a Kappa-based compact sedan/coupe/wagon. Because let's face it, as good as the GMT900s are purported to be (we think the new Sierra Denali may be the best-looking truck on the market), they're not gonna be the bacon-savers that light trucks proved to be for GM in the last decade.

GM plans to slash spending on midsize cars by $1 billion [Orlando Sentinel]

Lutz on the Holden VE Commodore SS-V: It's Magical! [Internal]