GM's struggling brands: Room for hope

Some of the automaker's brands are on shaky ground, but one industry watcher still sees hidden value that GM would be wise to mine.

From its very beginning, General Motors has been structured around the idea that more brands and a big company is always better. The idea was to spread out GM's engineering and design expenses over more brands aimed at a wide customer base.

That idea hasn't been looking so smart lately. Competitors like Toyota and Honda have been gaining ground with just two or three brands each. And even Detroit competitor Ford is now putting its resources behind just two of its big brands, Ford and Lincoln.

High gas prices have only made GM's challenges worse. Like other Detroit automakers, the automaker's product portfolio has been long on high-profit trucks and SUVs and short on more fuel-efficient smaller cars. GM's been bringing more and better cars to market, just not fast enough to meet the avalanche.

Not everything at GM is gloomy, though. The company has some good new products. Cadillac, in particular, is doing well. And the new Chevrolet Malibu mid-size sedan has been a big success in a competitive market segment. Chevrolet overall, though, has been hurt as the nation turns away from trucks and SUVs, which make up a big part of its product portfolio.

Some of GM's other brands seem to have more serious problems. And as a chorus of voices calls on GM to unload some of them, J.D. Power and Associates industry anaylst Tom Libby thinks that, in some cases, GM needs to keep its eye on the long term and stick by some of its less popular names.

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