Rick Wagoner
Rick Wagoner
George Richard "Rick" Wagoner, Jr.is an American businessman and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned as Chairman and CEO at General Motors on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House. The latter part of Wagoner's tenure as CEO of General Motors found him under heavy criticism as the market valuation of GM went down by more than 90% and the company lost more than $82 billion USD. This led to his being...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth9 February 1953
CountryUnited States of America
If you look from 1992 to 1997, we've really reduced the number of car models from more than 100 to about 81. Our strategy is to have the right number of products. Segment the brands better. There's a lot of work being done on the distribution side of the business. And the data's showing that our new products are doing a very decent job in the market.
That's silly. Fritz took the CFO job because I asked him to, and the board approved. It was a logical progression in his career and I hope Fritz continues to develop and grow. One of my most important jobs as chairman of GM is to identify and grow talent.
Overall economic growth in Europe hasn't been robust and the car market hasn't been robust,
It's fine if you're making 1,000 or 2,000 of an electric car, and I think there is value in that in a lot of ways, but it's not going to have a big dent in oil consumption in the country, or CO2 emissions.
I was incredibly impressed with his (Lutz's) continuing passion and enthusiasm for cars and trucks and the auto industry in general,
That's about what it was in 2004. We're not exactly sure about 2005, but we don't think it will be any different than last year, or what it has been in 2002, 2003 and 2004,
The industry sales mix is shifting away from the larger, higher-profit vehicles, even pickups, ... reflects too much reliance on those products for profitability.
You've got to have a consistent, gradual growth strategy, and I think some basics are going to be required,
The lower prices have given consumers a compelling reason to try our new vehicles, and it's working.
I'm not sure I'm going to make a lot of progress by scorekeeping everybody's sacrifice.
I think we'll probably pass Toyota in the U.S. on the workers-per-vehicle metric.
Everybody's got a piece of it. What we're trying to do is look at each piece and say, 'Where are we really uncompetitive versus the people we run against?'... If we're out of line, that's what we need to work on. So, it may not be exactly the same sacrifice everywhere, but I think just about everybody's got a piece of it.
On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials. In the course of that meeting, they requested that I 'step aside' as CEO of GM, and so I have.
History shows you don't know what the future brings.