Philip explained the apparent departure of his automotive advertising show to discuss real estate with his online audience, "The impact of consolidations in the auto industry brought about by a sluggish economy and accelerated by the recent bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler demands a new definition of "full service automotive advertising" by agencies anxious to help their auto dealer clients survive in a shrinking auto industry.  Conventional automotive advertising has already shifted to more cost effective Internet based digital marketing investments and integrated selling systems that link the newly developing virtual showrooms on the World Wide Web with proven selling processes in the real world.  As brick and mortar dealerships are eliminated the surviving auto dealers are being driven onto the Internet Super Highway to maintain market share and profitability.  The shift to online marketing plans does not replace the need for brick and mortar facilities but the efficiencies enjoyed by virtual showrooms suggests the need to reduce the expenses and capital required to support them.  Real estate has always represented the single largest investment and fixed expense for auto dealers and it is only logical that it should be adjusted to accommodate the reduced sales volume and profit margins that exist now and in the foreseeable future.  Auto dealers need help to reduce expenses and maximize their R.O.I. on many levels and today's full service automotive advertising agency must expand their services to earn their agency fees."

"I joined Colliers Abood Wood-Fay Real Estate to help them develop a specialized auto industry division - Colliers Automotive Real Estate Services, (C.A.R.S.), to provide additional insights and resources to facilitate auto dealer acquisitions and dispositions for my auto dealer clients.  Colliers International - Las Vegas Land and Evaluation Group is an independent commercial real estate office of Colliers International and a valued member of C.A.R.S.  Today's show features an interview with Grant Traub and Keith Cubba from the Las Vegas office to discuss the unique problems and solutions that exist in the Las Vegas market.  I decided to feature a different office each month on WAAOL to introduce some of the many opportunities that are available for those forward thinking auto dealers that are in a position to acquire new franchises and facilities at today's reduced prices.  I am also challenged to assist those dealers that have decided to sell or reduce the size of their facilities as a result of financial or factory pressures."

Grant Traub commented in advance of his interview to explain his reasons for joining C.A.R.S. and for appearing on WAAOL, "Las Vegas is struggling due to the recession which clobbered the tourist industry.  Local car dealerships are hurt and some stores are closing.  Now is an excellent time for out of market dealerships to obtain new points in a world class city."

About Grant S. Traub -Vice President

Grant S. Traub joined Colliers in 1998 after 2 years at CB Richard Ellis. As a specialist in the sale of development land and tenant representation, Grant's main responsibilities are site selection and deal negotiation. He has brokered over 60 transactions that include land sales, long-term leases, build-to-suits, investment sales, and REO dispositions worth over $162 million dollars in total considerations. Clients Grant has worked with include Community Bank of Nevada, Consolidated Mortgage, Clark County Credit Union, Healthsouth Corporation, Catholic Healthcare West, The Berkley Group, Morton's Restaurant Group, Sweet Tomatoes, Gateway Computers, Sephora, Candlewood Hotels, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Avaness Industries.

Grant has served on the Colliers Parrish Board of Director since 2003 and the Colliers Parrish Finance Committee since 2006.  He has been a member of the Leadership Committee for Colliers Las Vegas since its inception in 2008.As a committee member and donor for Links for Life, a major golf tournament sponsored by Colliers, Grant has helped the organization raise $2,000,000 for children's charities in Southern Nevada. He has coached the Del Webb Middle School Lacrosse Team since 2007 and also donates time to Camp Firefly. Grant was born in San Diego and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He earned his degree in Agricultural Business at CalPoly San Luis Obispo. 

About Keith Cubba - Consultant 

Since joining Colliers International in 2005, Keith Cubba has brokered investment property acquisitions/dispositions worth over $61,000,000 in gross sales proceeds. Investment property closings have ranged from Medical Office, to Retail, to NNN, to Sale Lease-Back opportunities.  In the summer of 2007, Keith partnered with Colliers Board of Directors member Grant Traub and marketing assistant Kim Hamilton to form the Land and Investment Group. The team offers brokerage service for Investment properties, Golf Courses, and Land.
 

Recently, the Land and Investment Group have listed major commercial REO properties for local banks as well as evaluated FDIC loan pools for private capital groups.  Keith has a BA from Loyola Marymount University and a Masters Degree from UCLA. Previous experience prior to joining Colliers International includes work as an Associate Professor at UCLA, and client based services in both the medical and marketing industries. 

The Colliers International "corporate culture" of giving back to the community has inspired Keith to serve as both a counselor and volunteer at Camp Firefly. He is currently the Tournament Chairman for the 14th Annual Links For Life charity golf tournament. 

One of the properties discussed on today's show is a Chrysler Dodge Jeep facility described as follows: 

For Sale or Lease:  6770 Redwood Street, Las Vegas, NV 89118

±17.5 Acre Auto Dealership with Service and Collision Center

Seller Financing | Immediate Availability

State of the Art Chrysler built Alpha Prototype Dealership 

Land Details

Available unbranded dealership with potential to retain Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge Brand

APN 176-02-201-018; 015 ±17.5 acres 

The Southeasterly Corner of Redwood St. and I-215 Beltway±955 feet of direct frontage on I-215 Beltway Frontage RoadC-2 zoning general commercial in the MUD 3 Overlay 

Total of 774 onsite parking spaces±151,000 in 2007 daily traffic counts at I-215 between Decatur Blvd. and I-15 

Building Details:  ±86,270 sf Under Roof First Floor Building Area

Sales area ±14,195 sf

Showroom area ±6,043 sf

2 Story Parts Department and administrative office area totaling ±8,337 sf

Automotive service and repair area ±22,699 sf (42 Service Bays) Collision Center and Body Shop ±27,000 sf7

Heated, downdraft paint booths15 Collision Center Bays30 Vehicle Collision Repair Spaces

Waste containment area ±349 sf 

Second Floor Building Area

Administrative offices and parts storage ±13,331 sf

Two Stop hydraulic elevator 

About Philip Zelinger

Philip Zelinger is the President of Ad Agency Online, LLC and founder of AdAgencyOnline.Net.  He invested 25 years as a General Manager and Dealer Principal followed by his last ten years in the automotive advertising industry learning from the teams that he built so he can now presume to teach on forums like AdAgencyOnline.Net.  His role as a "Dealer Coach" is enhanced by his hosting a nationally recognized auto industry social networking portal and blog talk radio station - WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The Time.  As the author of two books on the auto industry, including "How To Sell A Car - a Career Guide to The Automobile Industry," he is a recognized authority on market trends and developing technologies with the responsibility of selecting key vendors and applications for his dealer clients as well as forming strategic partnerships for his vendor clients to leverage their shared resources to help them bring their products and services to market.

About AdAgencyOnline.Net and Ad Agency Online, L.L.C.

AdAgencyOnline.Net reviews automotive advertising vendors and new technologies on several blog talk radio shows in addition to the Lunch With Phil Discussing Automotive Advertising.  Other shows include "Lunch With Ralph Discussing Automotive Advertising" and "Automotive Advertising Experts."  The shows attract automotive advertising agencies, auto dealers, auto industry vendors and O.E.M. representatives that listen to WAAOL to find vendors, applications and technologies to maximize the R.O.I. for their automotive advertising dollars.

AAOL is a national network of independent affiliated automotive advertising agencies linked by an online communication / distribution system developed by Philip Zelinger.  The proprietary operating system that powers AAOL was designed to reduce fixed and semi-variable expenses for full service automotive advertising agencies.  The developing technologies that enhanced the performance of the independent automotive advertising agencies linked by AAOL has served as the role model for the solutions suggested on AdAgencyOnline.Net and represented by AAOL to their affiliated automotive advertising agencies when serving their auto dealer clients.

Ad Agency Online L.L.C is focused on discovering and representing new automotive advertising vendors not yet recognized by the mainstream automotive advertising industry. Recent automotive advertising vendors represented by AAOL include; Argistics - AutoTransaXion, SiSTeR Technologies  - Video CarLot, EveryCarListed.Com, DealMaker.Com, CityTwist.Com, Bulldog Marketing Technologies, LeadConverter, Gumiyo, Kihon Media, CarFolks.Com, Ai Dealer, NeoSynergy and Laser Stream Video.

www.AdAgencyOnline.Net has interviewed a variety of respected automotive advertising experts including; Clayton Stanfield from EBay Motors, Mark Boyd and Mark Dubis from CarFolks.Com, Jared Hamilton from DrivingSales.Com, Dale Pollak from vAuto, David Wassmann from NeoSynergy, Jerry Daniels from Automotive Broadcasting Network, (ABN), Terry Alling from Kihon Media, David Marod from LeadConverter, Brian Ferris and Spencer Sterling from DealMaker.Com, Mike Parsons from Laser Stream Video, Brian Hoecht from Ai Dealer, Ralph Paglia from ADP and host to the auto industry social networking community ADM, Len Critcher from ecarlist.com, Tim Zierden from AAX, Jim Ziegler, motivational speaker and consultant to the auto industry, Jeff Kershner, ecommerce director for The Mile One Automotive Group and host of the auto industry social networking forum DealerRefresh.Com , Jeff Raab from the Detroit Trading Company, (DTX), Mike DeCecco from Dealer.Com, Ken Schwartz from CityTwist, Michael R. Spadafore from R. L. Polk & Co., Kevin Schwartz and Rick Rochon from AdSymetrix, Bruce Cerbone from Argistics, Scott Davis from Bulldog Marketing Technologies, Matt Watson and Douglas Kinney from VinSolutions, Hal Howard and Don Pollock from New Wave Automotive, LLC, (NWA),  Matt Brown and Zack Powell from TheDealerDashBoard.Com, Mark Burack from Liquid Motors and Pat Ryan, Jr. from FirstLook.

For additional information on www.AdAgencyOnline.Net , Colliers International - Las Vegas Land and Investment Group, Colliers Abood Wood-Fay Real Estate, C.A.R.S. or any of the subjects or properties discussed on today's show go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/adagencyonline and download the show.  Automotive advertising agencies, auto dealers or automotive advertising vendors that wish to join AdAgencyOnline.Net or seek representation by Ad Agency Online, L.L.C. should contact Philip Zelinger directly at pzads@bellsouth.net or call him at 1-888-796-2228.  To quote Philip, "Help is only a click away!"

Lise D'Andrea, President & CEO of CustomerServiceExperts.com, will visit “Let’s Talk Sales Culture,” the Internet based live call-in radio show hosted by Todd Cohen, the Philadelphia-based sales culture guru, on June 11 at 4pm Eastern Time.

The show's topic will be "Sales Culture and Customer Service – Perfect Together."

Lise is considered an industry expert, with over 15 years of consulting experience creating comprehensive and individualized customer service improvement programs. CSE's success has stemmed from Lise's winning philosophy, which she applies not only to her clients but to her team of service professionals.

A graduate of Temple University, Lise studied Marketing and Communications and was a two-time NCAA Champion in Women's Lacrosse. She held management roles at several top corporations with renowned service cultures and standards, including Xerox Corporation, Hilton Hotels and Saks Fifth Avenue. She completed Graduate course work at the Johns Hopkins University in Organizational Development and Training. From managing employee development programs to designing and implementing nationwide customer service training initiatives, Lise honed her skills and expertise in numerous capacities and launched CSE in 1993.

Lise has been quoted and appeared in numerous national publications and television shows, including Inside Edition and The Wall Street Journal. Lise is certified in Customer Experience Management (CEM) Strategy and Design. She's an active industry and community leader, a graduate of Leadership Anne Arundel 2004, is a Board member for the Mystery Shop Providers Association (MSPA) and is a member of The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). She was recognized as "Volunteer of the Year" by MSPA North America in 2005 and was the recipient of the YWCA "TWIN" Award, a Tribute to Women and Industry in Anne Arundel County.

Listeners can hear the show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/toddcohen, or call in to share their sales culture and customer service stories and questions with Todd and Lise at +1-646-929-1341. This episode of the show airs live on Thursday, June 11 at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. A recorded podcast is available about an hour after the show concludes.

“Our audience of senior sales professionals need to hear about the elements of excellent customer service,” said Cohen. “Lise is one of the most qualified people I know to help sales professionals understand why customer service is so critical to creating great sales culture.”

Listeners to the Todd Cohen “Let’s Talk Sales Culture” radio show can also share sales experiences and questions with Todd, either via email (todd@toddcohen.com), the ToddCohen Blog (www.toddcohen.com/blog) or by listening to the live show. There is also a “chat” room function at the www.blogtalkradio.com/toddcohen page that can be used to communicate with Todd during the live program.

“As an effective sales leader and team coach, Todd has already recognized how podcasts would extend the reach of his training and management expertise to a global audience of sales practitioners with portability and convenience,” said Steve Lubetkin, managing partner of Professional Podcasts. “Todd is now taking his expertise into the next channel of social media, Internet talk radio, to broaden the exchange of information with his colleagues in a real-time live Internet conversation.”

About Todd Cohen

Todd Cohen is a high-energy, high-performance sales leader.  Since he began his career in 1984, Todd and his sales teams have delivered more than $300 million in revenue for leading equipment, education, e-learning and information companies, including Xerox, Gartner Group, Pensare, Thomson, and LexisNexis.  Todd’s successful career has progressed from proven individual contributor and repeat President’s Club winner, to innovative sales manager, to accomplished sales executive.  Most recently he was Vice President of Sales for LexisNexis.

In 2009, Cohen will launch a series of seminars and workshops on sales culture on a national basis. The schedule will be available at www.toddcohen.com.

More information and a photo of Todd available at http://toddcohen.com/about/pages/about-todd-cohen/.

Listen to this promo for the next broadcast of “Let’s Talk Sales Culture,” on BlogTalkRadio.com/toddcohen. The show takes place Thursday, June 11, 2009, at 4pm Eastern Time.

In this program, Todd’s special guest is Lise D’Andrea, president and CEO of CustomerServiceExperts.com, for a conversation about “Sales Culture and Customer Service – Perfect Together!” Listen at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/toddcohen, or call +1-646-929-1341 to join the conversation.

   Download the promo here.

Listen to the promo here:

Produced by Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ.

Keywords: Community of Sales Professionals, Matrix Organization, Networking, Sales Candidates, Hiring Models, Sales Coaching, Sales Communication, Sales Community, Keywords: Sales Excellence, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Training, Sales Metrics, Sales Networking, Sales Process Training, Sales Teams, Sales Training, Salesperson, Sales Training Program, virtual teams, sales success triad

del.icio.us Tags: Community of Sales Professionals,Matrix Organization,Networking,Sales Candidates,Hiring Models,Sales Coaching,Sales Communication,Sales Community,Keywords: Sales Excellence,Sales Leadership,Sales Management,Training,Sales Metrics,Sales Networking,Sales Process Training,Sales Teams,Sales Training,Salesperson,Sales Training Program,virtual teams

Sandra De Freitas is a top tech coach, speaker, trainer and expert in internet technology. She is the founder of TechCoachForCoaches.com, a successful coaching, consulting and training firm. Her clients include coaches, entrepreneurs, small business owners, online business owners and health care professionals.

Sandra’s love for technology began 20 years ago when her parents bought the family a computer. She began using the computer to play games but soon found herself to be very interested in how it all worked. Soon there after Sandra found herself enrolling in computer science courses to satisfy her desire to analyze, problem solve and know how it all works! All this curiosity resulted in her obtaining a university degree in computer science.

Sandra founded TechCoachForCoaches.com 3 years ago. She was attending a workshop for coaches when she was approached by participants to provide them with her technology expertise, and to assist them in building their businesses easily using technology. Clients love to work with Sandra because of her expertise. However, they also enjoy her sense of humour, compassion, focus, her business savvy, and her unique ability to make technology easy to use and understand.

Sandra also has experience as a personal coach. Trained by The Coaches Training Institute and Chris Barrow of The Coaching Business School.

She gets a kick out of clients who walk into you her programs as self proclaimed “technophobes” and leave tech geniuses! She is fascinated by internet marketing, search engine optimization and WordPress. Currently, she is putting together her first book to be released in the Spring/Summer of 2008.

For fun Sandra takes things to the extreme. She enjoys white water rafting, white water kayaking, river boarding, snorkelling, jet skiing, hiking, playing soccer and anything else that involves adventure and gets her away from technology, temporarily of course.

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About David Mathison:

     Biography
     Resume
     Experience
     Awards
     Books
     Radio Interviews
     TV Appearances
     Articles and Interviews
     Interview-Contact David Mathison

David Mathison is a media consultant, speaker, author, publisher, and hi-tech entrepreneur. He is an internationally recognized media expert with more than 20 years experience in content distribution. Some of the world's largest - and smallest - publishers use his solutions to directly connect with massive audiences for maximum exposure. His legacy provides global citizens with free news, financial data, audio and video information on the web's most popular sites.

BE THE MEDIA is an extension of Mathison's award-winning work in eliminating inefficiencies in publishing, providing all participants with more egalitarian, democratic and open systems. The book is the result of a decentralized, collaborative effort by some of today's leading media activists, educators and experts. BE THE MEDIA offers solid, practical and proven techniques that show artists how to inexpensively create and widely distribute their content.

Mathison has been interviewed by Dow Jones, Reuters, Publish, Upside and EContent, among many others. Mathison's initiatives have covered by leading analysts including Forrester Research, JupiterMedia, Yankee Group, Giga Group, META Group, Delphi, Gartner Group, Patricia Seybold Group, IDC, Outsell and the UK-based firms Ovum, NetImperatives and Bloor Research, among others.

Articles on Mathison have appeared on CNN.com, in the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, Esther Dyson's Release 1.0, Fortune, Upside, The New York Times, Computer Letter, the Seybold Report, Demo Letter, CNet, Red Herring, MacWorld, Internet Week, InfoWorld, Computer World, Interactive Week, Information Week, Newspapers and Technology and XML.com, among many others. He was invited by Inc. Magazine to join a panel of CEOs to evaluate barter sites.

As speaker, panelist, moderator or chairman, Mathison has presented at conferences across all segments of the media, such as Digital Hollywood, Book Tech, Streaming Media, Seybold Publishing, Internet World, and Internet Outlook, among many others. In July 2004 he was Chairman of Publicity for "Declarations of Media Independence" conference. Internationally, he has appeared at UK Online, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Cairo Book Fair, and he made presentations entirely in Spanish to librarians throughout Central and South America.

Mathison serves on the following boards:

• Board of Conveners: Marin Community Media Center. The board co-wrote the by-laws and selected the founding Board of Directors for Marin's new non-profit community media center.

• Board of Directors: The Mountain Play Association. Mill Valley, California (on sabbatical).

• Board of Directors: Webhood.org, a non-profit entity whose mission is to break down income related barriers to computer education for underprivileged and at-risk youth.

• Advisory Board: StyleMob.com, an online community for fashion inspiration. Bought by Glam (12/07)

• Advisory Board: Media and Technology, San Francisco Dragons, a Major League Lacrosse team.

Mathison holds a B.A. from the State University of New York, and a Masters degree in International Business with a focus in East Asian studies from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- For General Motors Corp., the question is no longer whether it will get a government loan or if Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner will be replaced. It’s whether anything can prevent the largest U.S. automaker from sliding into bankruptcy.

Even an offer by the Treasury Department today to provide temporary relief, after the Senate rejected a bailout plan approved by the House, isn’t likely to offset the Dec. 10 announcement that GM’s 49 percent-owned affiliate, GMAC LLC, lacked the capital to become a bank holding company. That means the financing unit won’t be able to access Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to help make auto loans.

GMAC may now have to file for Chapter 11 protection, with or without a loan, joining GM’s biggest parts supplier, Delphi Corp., which is already in bankruptcy. The Detroit-based automaker, leaking $67 million a day -- enough to buy a fleet of 1,800 Cadillac CTS coupes -- may soon be sucked into the vortex.

“GM already is bankrupt and should file for bankruptcy,” said David Littman, senior economist for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a policy research organization in Midland, Michigan. “They have too much overhead and too little time left to reduce size to be a survivor in this industry.”

The company eschewed the Chapter 11 option for months, believing it would make consumers unwilling to buy their cars. Lead director George Fisher said last week that bankruptcy is “way down the list of options.” GM has been working with New York lawyer Martin Bienenstock of Dewey & LeBoeuf to devise an option for using the bankruptcy process to restructure, according to a person familiar with the contingency plan.

Cash Concerns

A bankruptcy filing in the U.S. wouldn’t necessarily include overseas subsidiaries such as GM Europe, which builds Opel and Vauxhall automobiles. It would, said Alan Baum, manager of forecasting for Planning Edge, a consulting firm in Birmingham, Michigan, make a foreign supplier or partner “fear that a GM bankruptcy might eat up its cash.”

The Senate thwarted the government bailout in a procedural vote after talks failed in a dispute with Republicans over how quickly auto-union wages should be cut. Only 10 Republicans voted to move forward on the rescue plan.

GM shares fell about 4 percent to $3.94 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading as of 5:30 p.m.

To GM’s critics, worries about cash are three years too late. The financial crisis wasn’t the culprit that brought the company to the brink of insolvency, as Wagoner told Congress last month. It was just the final straw in a succession of unresolved or unaddressed issues.

Shrinking Sales, Value

Since 2005, GM has lost a cumulative $72.4 billion, had its debt downgraded to junk, watched its share of U.S. auto sales shrink by almost 1 million vehicles and shed 90 percent of its market value. It introduced gas-guzzling vehicles as fuel prices rose, failed to slim down its product offerings and dealer networks quickly enough and wasn’t able to cap its labor costs in time to stem the bleeding. In September 2007, the company won the right to hire new workers at lower wages starting in 2010 -- too far down the road to avoid the consequences of a recession and a credit crunch that engulf it now.

“We made mistakes,” Wagoner conceded at a Senate hearing last week. Among the errors, he said, were “failing to build sufficient flexibility into our operations and not moving fast enough to invest in smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.”

100th Birthday

Wagoner, 55, who has been CEO since 2000 and declined to be interviewed for this article, was also slow to see the impact of the credit crisis. On Sept. 16, the day after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, he told reporters at a party at Detroit’s Renaissance Center marking the company’s 100th birthday that he saw “no big impact” on consumers. The next month GM’s auto sales in the U.S. plunged 45 percent.

After 77 years as the world’s largest automaker, GM and its executives were unable to embrace change. The company continued to plow resources into sport-utility vehicles and make bad alternative-fuel bets, even after consumer buying habits shifted. It rejected an offer from Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co., to form a global alliance. And it dismissed calls for radical restructuring from former board member Jerome York and other critics.

Ignoring Advice

York, 70, a former Chrysler Corp. finance chief, was advising Tracinda Corp. CEO Kirk Kerkorian, who had amassed a 9.9 percent stake in GM. He told analysts in January 2006 that the time had come for the automaker “to go into a crisis mode and act accordingly.” York calculated that GM was burning through cash at a rate of $24 million a day, which meant it had about 1,000 days before it ran out -- in October 2008.

GM ignored York’s advice to reduce its number of models, including getting rid of the Hummer and Saab brands, and to cut both management and labor costs in what he called an “equality of sacrifice.” He resigned nine months later, in October 2006, frustrated by the board’s unwillingness to take action. Only after York left did GM decide to sell Hummer. Now it’s talking about getting rid of Saab and Saturn, as well as Pontiac.

“Three years ago I thought GM had the time and financial resources to save itself,” York, now CEO of Harwinton Capital LLC, said in an interview. “Now I’m not so sure. Who’s responsible? Top management and the board of directors.”

Auto Bubble

Although York’s prediction was prescient -- GM has told Congress it will run out of cash by the end of the year if it doesn’t get relief -- what no one could foresee then were two developments that sealed GM’s fate: a run-up in gasoline prices and a credit-market freeze that followed Lehman’s collapse.

The frozen credit markets signaled the end of an era of easy money that delayed GM’s day of reckoning. In a parallel to the housing bubble, GM and its Big Three brethren enjoyed a decade of artificially inflated sales. Finance companies did a booming business in subprime auto loans, a rarity in 2000, which accounted for 18 percent of new-car financing by 2005, according to CNW Market Research in Bandon, Oregon. And the automakers’ own subsidiaries offered low-interest financing that helped move cars off dealers’ lots.

That did nothing to stem GM’s steady loss of market share in the U.S., from 30 percent in 2000 to 22 percent today. It did help keep the industry’s annual U.S. sales at or near record levels, topping 17 million vehicles.

Managed for Cash

“They were trying to delay the draconian measures they needed to take,” said Ashvin Chotai, managing director of Intelligence Automotive Asia Ltd., a consulting firm in London.

GM gave the bubble a boost with a zero percent “Keep America Rolling” financing campaign started eight days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Sales jumped 42 percent in October. The program got the company even more hooked on incentives than it had been in the 1980s. “Keep America Rolling” was followed by “Employee Pricing,” “Red Tag Specials” and other low-interest and rebate deals that made discounting the norm.

“It was a great initiative to prop up the market, but it’s a trap they fell into,” said Chotai, who estimates that annual U.S. auto sales would have fallen to 13 million to 14 million without incentives. “Nobody believes list price anymore, so you’ve destroyed your pricing power and you’ve diluted your brand.”

That’s only one way GM executives were short-sighted. It’s not that Wagoner, who received an MBA from Harvard University in 1977, doesn’t know management. It’s that between dwindling liquidity and its sky-high fixed costs, the company was increasingly managed for cash, even at the expense of profit.

‘Alternate Universe’

GM continued to build unprofitable models because it needed the cash to meet financial obligations, such as a roughly $5 billion annual health-care bill for workers and retirees. In 2007, even though GM posted a $38.7 billion net loss, it managed to generate $189 million in free-cash flow. That’s equivalent to burning the furniture in order to stay warm.

“These are not stupid people, but they had created an alternate universe,” said James Womack, co-author of “The Machine That Changed the World,” a book about the Toyota Motor Corp. production system that bested Detroit’s. “They lived in a cocoon. GM was weak for reasons that were under the surface, and the financial crisis brought it all out.”

To John Shook, a former Toyota manager who worked at a joint-venture plant run by the Japanese company and GM in Fremont, California, that explains why the two automakers are in such different shape today. When it comes to engineering and manufacturing, Shook says, Toyota and GM are about equal. Where they differ is in their corporate cultures.

“Toyota is built on trial and error, on admitting you don’t know the future and that you have to experiment,” Shook said. “At GM, they say, ‘I’m senior management. There’s a right answer, and I’m supposed to know it.’ This makes it harder to try things.”

‘Increasing Certitude’

So while Toyota assumed it must continuously adapt if it wanted to succeed in the U.S., Shook says, GM believed it would forever be the market leader. Its managers brought Toyota’s manufacturing methods from Fremont to Detroit. They couldn’t duplicate Toyota’s zen: question everything.

Wagoner, a 31-year GM veteran, was the embodiment of its culture, an apostle of incremental change. Exciting as a Saturn, quotable as an owner’s manual, the one-time Duke University basketball player exuded quiet confidence about GM’s future.

“I know that things will turn around,” he told Fortune magazine in February 2006, after problems erupted at the automaker. The magazine concluded in a cover story that “the evidence points, with increasing certitude, to bankruptcy.”

“GM people tend to internalize, to think that they can figure things out on their own,” said Don Runkle, chairman of Inkster, Michigan-based battery maker EaglePicher Inc. and a former GM chief engineer.

Perot Appalled

Over the years, the occasional outsider who entered the company with notions of shaking it up has been rejected as a foreign organism. GM acquired Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $2.55 billion in 1984 and gave its chairman, H. Ross Perot, a seat on the board. The brash Texan, appalled at GM’s ways, shocked directors by challenging then-CEO Roger Smith in meetings and publicly ridiculing the company.

“The first EDS-er to see a snake kills it,” Perot told Business Week in 1986. “At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.”

In 1986, GM paid Perot $700 million for his stock and his resignation from the board.

Even when GM did make changes, they weren’t revolutionary. In 1992, a year when the automaker posted a $23.5 billion loss, Chairman and CEO Robert Stempel resigned under pressure after 27 months on the job. It named director John Smale, the retired CEO of Procter & Gamble Co., as non-executive chairman and appointed Jack Smith, a GM lifer, as CEO.

‘Run Common, Run Lean’

Smith invested in SUVs and pickup trucks, starving cars, especially smaller models where Japanese automakers dominated. He rode a wave of prosperity, cheap gasoline and a strong North American housing market to eight straight years of profitability and a record share price of $93.62 in April 2000 before turning over the wheel to his protégé, Wagoner.

While Smith’s mantra was “run common, run lean,” he never achieved the goal of creating shared platforms and standards that might have slashed operating costs. GM has long been penalized, compared with its Japanese rivals, by its capital costs. It develops scores of chassis to meet different consumer preferences around the world. Yet it wasn’t until this year, after more than a decade of reorganization, that the company introduced its first common chassis for use worldwide. It will serve a mid-size Opel Insignia in Europe and a new Buick LaCrosse to be built in the U.S. next year.

Pontiac Aztek

Smith was also unable to drive sales with novel products. The Pontiac Aztek, a mid-size crossover introduced in 1999 as “the most versatile vehicle on the planet,” was so unsightly, so badly received, it was voted the ugliest car of all time in an August 2008 poll by the London Telegraph. The model was discontinued in 2004.

Challenged by 2001’s twin shocks of recession and 9/11, the new CEO, who had spent most of his career in finance, fell back on what he knew best. Through its GMAC LLC unit, GM attracted ever more buyers with creative financing gambits. One was the “incentivized lease,” requiring no money down and low monthly payments. While that lured customers and stoked production, when the leases expired, GM had to write off the difference between a vehicle’s assumed value, for lease purposes, and its true market value. Since resale prices had been reduced by the surfeit of GM product on the market, so was the company’s profit.

Shattered Illusion

The illusion of prosperity would vanish when the era of easy money passed. In the first quarter of 2005, after 12 straight years of profit, GM lost $1.3 billion. The company’s guidance on March 15 that a loss was coming startled Wall Street. Investors beat down the company’s shares by 24 percent over the next four weeks.

On May 4, Kerkorian, 91, who had reaped $3 billion on a 10 percent stake in Chrysler that he sold in 1998, disclosed that he had amassed 3.9 percent of GM’s shares and was launching a tender offer for more. The next day Standard & Poor’s knocked the company’s bonds down to one grade below investment quality. GM, once the bluest of blue-chips, now had junkers for bonds.

Turnaround Plan

Wagoner unveiled a “turnaround plan” in November 2005. It called for closing nine plants, eliminating 30,000 jobs, boosting employee contributions to GM’s health-care plan, increasing investment in its best-selling models such as the Hummer and revamping marketing efforts.

To Kerkorian and York, who joined GM’s board in February 2006, that wasn’t bold enough. The plant closings and health- care changes saved only $2 billion a year, they said, and the company’s idea of innovation was more versions of the same thing: the SUVs and trucks whose sales had been carrying GM.

Others had come to a similar conclusion. A month after Wagoner’s plan was announced, S&P again downgraded GM’s debt and called bankruptcy “not far-fetched.”

Wagoner found the crisis talk overblown. He dismissed a flurry of Chapter 11 questions by saying there was “no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy.”

In April 2006, Wagoner took charge of GM’s North America division. That same month, he announced the sale of 51 percent of GMAC to New York-based private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP for $7.4 billion. The move was intended to improve GM’s liquidity and protect GMAC’s access to credit markets, which had been threatened by the parent company’s ratings.

Confidence Vote

Wagoner sought a vote of confidence from the board that month and got it -- though not from GM’s newest director. York said he thought more sweeping changes were needed and that they weren’t going to come from within.

He and Kerkorian began to pursue Ghosn, 54, who had pulled Nissan back from the brink of bankruptcy. In May, Kerkorian met with Ghosn in Nashville, Tennessee, and asked him to consider an alliance. Renault and Nissan would each take a 10 percent stake in GM, share resources and collaborate as a way of cutting costs and spurring change. Ghosn was interested, according to York, and said he’d want a seat on the GM board. That would give him influence over the company’s strategy and perhaps position him to succeed Wagoner.

Kerkorian then sent a letter to Wagoner. In GM fashion, the proposal was studied for months and brought to the board. For directors, it was another opportunity to show their confidence in the incumbent CEO. On Oct. 4, they put an end to any alliance talks. Two days later, York quit the board.

“I haven’t found an environment in the boardroom that is very receptive to probing much beyond the materials provided by management,” York wrote in his letter of resignation.

Twin Pillars

GM shares dropped 6.3 percent on the news, and over the next two months Kerkorian unwound his position in GM. He netted $106 million on his $1.7 billion investment, according to regulatory filings.

In 2007, the two pillars holding up the company began to crumble, and not even the deal to reduce labor costs with the United Auto Workers could save it.

First, the subprime-loan market imploded, hurting GMAC’s Residential Capital LLC unit. On Nov. 1, 2007, GMAC reported a third-quarter loss of $1.6 billion as a result of subprime- mortgage writedowns. Over the next three weeks, GM lost one- third of its market value.

$4.11 a Gallon

Then gasoline prices began climbing, topping out at an average price of $4.11 a gallon in July 2008, ending America’s love affair with SUVs and pickup trucks -- the very categories that Wagoner had staked the company’s future on in his 2005 turnaround plan.

It’s not as if other automakers hadn’t also favored trucks in recent years. Gas-guzzlers were more profitable than light vehicles and, as long as fuel was cheap, far more popular.

The problem was that GM so skewed its model lineup away from sedans that it was out of position when the market turned. To make matters worse, at the moment many Americans became concerned with getting better gas mileage and going “green,” GM was years behind on developing alternative-energy cars.

Toyota and Honda Motor Co. each introduced gas-electric hybrid cars in 1997 -- the Prius and Insight, respectively. GM engineers scoffed at both. These were small, odd-looking and costly to produce. Why would people buy a car whose price outweighed the gas savings? GM executives told reporters the hybrids were public-relations gimmicks.

EV1’s Demise

GM discontinued its one alternative-energy vehicle -- the battery-powered EV1 -- in 2003, after spending more than $1 billion on a car with limited range that flopped with consumers. Company engineers believed that cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells were the real future in this field.

“They knew the home run was 20 years away, and they weren’t willing to settle for singles and doubles in the meantime,” said Shook, the former Toyota manager. “At Toyota, they said, ‘We don’t know the future; let’s try something we can do right now.’”

Today, with Prius a hit with consumers, GM is scrambling to catch up. It has several hybrid models of its own and, with Congress badgering him to produce more alternative-energy cars, Wagoner has made their development a major part of the restructuring program for which he’s seeking $10 billion.

GM Apologizes

He conceded the error of his ways in June, when GM’s board gave the go-ahead to market the electric-powered Chevrolet Volt in 2010. “Axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids,” Wagoner told Motor Trend magazine, when asked to name his greatest mistake as CEO. “It didn’t affect profitability, but it did affect image.”

The confession may have come too late. As did an ad GM placed on Dec. 8 in the Automotive News, an industry publication, acknowledging it had “disappointed” Americans in recent years with its quality, design and reliance on trucks.

Without a reduction in debt and lower labor costs, GM may not weather the current slowdown in U.S. vehicle sales. Congressional critics have argued that the rescue plan passed by the House on Dec. 10 doesn’t give the government leverage to force substantive changes on management and labor. Even a bridge loan, said Edward Altman, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, “is destined to fail.”

“They’ve actually done some terrific stuff,” said Womack, the author, who is chairman of management-training firm Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It’s just that the scale is so large and the changes came so late in the game. The band was all tuned up, the brass was polished, but the ship had already hit the iceberg.”

• McCain's campaign falling apart - money woes, losing staff, etc.  Are conservatives being unfair to McCain?  Is he really any worse than Rudy or Fred?

• Virginia school hugging ban - I blogged about it earlier and it is also a big headline at Drudge.  A little lighter and should be fun.  Plus, Ed's got kids and I don't, so we may have different perspectives.

• The U.S. Open finish.

• Movies:  I haven't seen Fantastic 4 yet although I finally saw Spidey 3 over the weekend and wasn't too impressed.

• The Washington Examiner editorial this morning on politicians getting rich while in office.