GM's new CEO sits in front of Congress members and TV cameras again Wednesday morning to testify about a defect linked to deadly crashes.
Whatever she says will be overshadowed by "nine words echoed in a nauseating loop: 'None of the solutions represents an acceptable business case,' ” Daniel Howes writes in his Detroit News business column.
Credit those to a still-anonymous GM engineer, who argued in an internal memo that fixes for a faulty ignition switch blamed for at least 13 deaths and more than 30 accidents could not be done cheaply enough to make it worthwhile for the GM of a decade ago.
It turns the stomach. Because no matter how many times Barra apologizes, no matter how often she meets with the families of victims, no matter how committed she, her team and the company’s directors are to making sure something like this never happens again, they still have those nine words to explain.
"That’s not how we do business in today’s GM,” CEO Mary Barra says. (Getty Images/Paul Warner)
Howes, describing the situation as "a full-blown crisis" for GM, notes that it "approved a substandard ignition switch for its small-car program only to approve a second alleged 'fix' that also failed to meet specifications set by GM itself — a conundrum that Barra, an automotive engineer, struggled to explain" Tuesday to the the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
Today she'll be questioned by a Senate subcommittee.
Nothing she says "is likely to wipe a stain of callous indifference from a sprawling GM technical apparatus," The News' columnist observes. "Barra is in an incredibly tough spot."
She’s a product of old GM, but she didn’t run it or global product development when the ill-fated Cobalt and its siblings were under development. She’s leading what she calls “new GM,” but her descriptions of what that actually means registered mostly as corporate spin. . . .
She distanced herself and her leadership team from direct culpability. She used the fact of an ongoing internal investigation as both evidence of action and a crutch to skirt tough questions.
“The facts will be the facts,” she testified. “Once they are in, my leadership team will do what needs to be done. We will not shirk from our responsibilities. Today’s GM will do the right thing.”
The not-so-subtle implication: yesterday’s GM didn’t — do the right thing, that is. Barra repeatedly parried descriptions of corporate decision-making a decade or so ago with “unacceptable” and “that’s not how we do business in today’s GM.” And then she added this: “We’ve moved from cost culture after the bankruptcy to a customer culture.”
That remains to be seen.
In the Free Press, business columnist Tom Walsh also comments on the CEO's tough bind:
"Barra has a very weak hand to play, as GM tries to contain the damage from a 13-year litany of miscalculations and miscommunication, if not a cover-up, that preceded the long-delayed recall of 2.5 million small cars."
