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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.auto
Subject: Re: Pontiac Fiero
Message-ID: <387@terak.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Feb-85 11:26:11 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.387
Posted: Thu Feb 21 11:26:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Feb-85 02:24:15 EST
References: <283@edsel.UUCP> <25300009@siemens.UUCP>
Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 19

> Some minor clarification: the Fiero was pushed through the exceptionally rigid
> and reluctant GM burocracy by a few enterprising engineers and managers, who
> could only win project approval by targeting the car as a high- mileage
> commuter car.

Further substantiation: some years back I read in an automotive trade
publication that the Pontiac Division was fighting tooth-and-nail to
keep GM Corporate from stopping Pontiac's "P-car".  Seems that GM
felt that another GM Division (which shall remain nameless) already
was selling a 2-seat high-performance sports car, and that if the
P-car was built it would only steal customers from this other Division.

This practice of "protecting your current products" is the reason that
innovation tends to come from up-start companies (and countries).  IBM
sure did fine when they prevented the PC-jr from stealing customers
away from the PC by having too little memory to run Lotus 1-2-3 and
making the keyboard intolerable for word processing!
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug