Rick Wagoner Quotes (94 Quotes)

A lot of times, people will get down on the situation with the unions and with the UAW. But this wouldn't have worked without good engagement at the local level with the UAW. They understand that improving quality and productivity is important for their long-term success as well. It's been a real team sport.

I remember very clearly at the first budget review having a pretty direct conversation with the head of manufacturing... We began to get huge improvements in productivity and responsiveness. I got a chance to see that firsthand.

I don't see a big panacea reducing the number of brands we have.

Ford, as I understand it, had done away with the concept of regional management, and now they've re-introduced that in Europe, so it's kind of a two-way street.

All this improvement is great, but all that does is get us in the game to play for improvements that we need in the future, so that we can be aggressive in the marketplace.

You've got to have a consistent, gradual growth strategy, and I think some basics are going to be required,

Our relationship is strong, and we look forward to our continued partnership. This transaction will allow us to preserve our business relationship, while further building up GM's already significant liquidity position during this critical phase of our turnaround.

We believe in fair exchange rates and Japan doesn't practice that. They have massive U.S. dollar reserves, and they use them to intervene regularly.

As we look at the responsibilities we have to a broad range of constituents, as we look at what we need to do to make the business successful, as we look at our businesses around the world, we think there are significant costs to bankruptcy. We don't think it's a good option.

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday that the automaker's turnaround plan for its North American division is on track, but he wouldn't update the company's earnings forecast. GM withdrew its earnings guidance in April after it lost 1.1 billion in the first quarter. Wagoner noted that the company had previously estimated earnings of 4 to 5 a share for the year. We will not meet that, ... North America is missing, and missing badly.

We have to offer products people want to buy, not have to buy,

The industry sales mix is shifting away from the larger, higher-profit vehicles, even pickups, ... reflects too much reliance on those products for profitability.

It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed - our huge legacy cost burden and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with revenue.

While this sounds like a large number, we recognize that it only goes part of the way we need to go to put GM North America in the fully competitive position that is necessary to maintain and enhance our future viability and growth.

This really highlights one of the weaknesses of our business model is too much reliance on those products (large SUVs and pickups) for profit and not enough profitability from those other products,

will reduce the impact of plan changes on affected individuals.

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.

The big and the fast beat the small and the fast. If you check out the NBA today, they're big and fast.

We know a lot about Daewoo. We think we understand what the value of Daewoo is to us. Our view on that will not be changed by or influenced by other people being interested in it. If somebody else comes and pays a whopper amount for it, more power to them.

I've given no thought to anything but turning the business around, ... I wasn't brought up to run and hide when things get tough. I'm convinced that's the way that things get righted.

While vehicle deliveries were somewhat resilient last week, it is too soon to determine the effect on consumer confidence, ... We will closely monitor the economic outlook and will be prepared to make appropriate production adjustments.

We've got to move more quickly in addressing these challenging, chronic structural-cost issues,

One of our biggest challenges is our lack of cost-competitiveness in the United States, which is due to our legacy costs, especially the ever-increasing burden of high health-care expenses, ... Addressing this challenge in a fair and equitable way requires close work with our union partners, in addition to our ongoing work with government and health-care providers. Gary is the ideal person to do this.

We are very pleased with the market's reaction to our launch products. In the first three months of the year, our new products accounted for about 30 per cent of our total sales more than double where we were a couple of years ago.

I think it's going to be silly not to take the competitive threat seriously. If we haven't learned any lessons from Japan and Korea, we deserve the things that befall us, ... On the flip side, the growth in China continues to be so strong that our guess is that most of the capacity in China will be used to meet Chinese needs.

Most of the model consolidation we've done is behind us. There will be some fine tuning.

We don't always agree on stuff, but when it's time to blow the whistle and start the game, we're not still debating.

Health costs in this country are out of control, ... This will significantly improve our overall cost competitiveness ... and will be critical to getting GM North America back to profitability as soon as possible.

With the ongoing globalization of GM's product development organization, and the implementation of our global architecture strategy, Bob felt he needed to devote his efforts to product development full time, and I agreed, ... Bob's legacy at GM will be in our future cars and trucks. It makes sense for him to devote his full energies to that critical task.

We believe by being sensitive to the balancing act these women face each day, we're increasing their commitment to General Motors. It's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business for GM and helps us retain the brightest, most capable workers.

I'm not sure we think it's a win to talk about what you're taking out.

GM's top priority is to restore our North American operations to profitability and positive cash flow as quickly as possible. In 2005, we laid out a comprehensive and integrated strategy to address the structural issues that impede our competitiveness and profitability, and we are focused on rapidly executing all aspects of the turnaround plan.

We haven't dropped the goal, ... It's obviously tougher right now as we have pension and health-care costs right now, for example.

GM had some notable sales successes as we continued to expand in key growth markets around the world in 2005.

All of our business units except GM North America are on or above track, and that has the extreme attention of us all. Progress is moving in the right direction ... but we still have more work to do.

Our fate is going to be determined in the next three to five years on getting this business in the U.S. turned around and profitable,

Frankly, we've done it in the fairest and most cost-effective way we could do it,

The decisions we are announcing today were very difficult to reach because of their impact on our employees and the communities where we live and work. But these actions are necessary for G.M. to get its costs in line with our major global competitors.

Whoever is ahead in this area can get a big advantage versus the other guys. Just being big isn't enough. We really want to pick up the pace in everything we do in the company.

Over the last nine months we have been aggressively implementing our North American turnaround plan.

To make this happen, we need to bring down costs and build the necessary infrastructure -- and the best way to do that is by business and government working together.

Jerry brings years of business experience and knowledge of the automotive industry to the GM board. We are pleased to welcome him to our Board.

That's because a couple products represent a larger percentage of the total at Chrysler than at GM. That can be an advantage and a curse, in terms of sales going up or down based on the results of a couple cars.

We would welcome a more proactive role from elected officials at the national and state levels in broad-based strategies to address the U.S. health care crisis,