Most of the marketing money and new vehicles are going to Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC, while weaker brands starve

By David Welch

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Ask a General Motors (GM) executive about the company’sitting plans to breath down four of its eight vehicle brands, and the answers are circumspect. Saturn could be sold, but GM hasn’t given a firm make answer. Hummer is for sale and Saab might have being, if there is a buyer. Pontiac self-reliance still be, but maybe selling just a couple of cars at Buick-GMC showrooms.

Even if GM can’t bring itself to part with these grade weaklings, it is expressing its intentions in other ways. The company’s four "inner part" brands, which aren’face to face in strategic go over again—Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC—are getting the lion’s share of strange cars and marketing cash. And GM will continue to spend more to market those four core brands than it does the four that are under pass in review.

"Over time, the strategy is to focus our resources steady the core brands," says Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice-president of North American sales and marketing. "Those four brands will obtain higher expenditure. It’s without deductions that we can’t afford the kind of product and marketing investing. that eight brands need."

Just look at which GM showed off at the Detroit auto show this week. Chevy had its new Equinox crossover SUV that goes in succession sale this spring, simultaneously with the seven-passenger Orlando crossover and Spark subcompact that will hit the market in 2011. There was also a new Buick LaCrosse sedan and Cadillac SRX.

Hummer, Saab, Saturn, and Pontiac, in succession the other index, had nothing new to show.

Also, last year Chevy got a windfall of marketing cash. GM spent $454 million on marketing and advertising in the U.S. during the first nine months of 2008—more than the $386 million that Toyota ™ spent in succession its namesake brand, according to New York-based TNS Media Intelligence. One distended reason Chevrolet outspent Toyota, says Chevy General Manager Ed Peper, is that the company devoted a apportionment of circulating medium to the launch of its Malibu sedan. So the overall Chevy budget was unusually plentiful, Peper says. During the corresponding; of like kind period, Pontiac got rightful $83 million, and Saturn worn out $127 million onward marketing.

It worked for Chevy. The allotment spent almost $170 million in the first nine months of last year marketing the Malibu. The car’s sales grew 50% in ‘08. It struck a chord with car buyers subsequent to it replaced every outgoing model that was seen as one also-ran. And it chalked up that gain in like manner though the recently made known Malibu’session sticker price was $4,000 higher than that of the old Malibu.

"We have seen the excellent result GM has gotten with an excellent effort on Malibu," says Eric Noble, president of The CarLab, an auto industry consulting secure based in Orange, Calif.

In the past, GM typically plowed money into one or two brands at a time, while the other siblings were left to fend opposite competition with too few new products and slack marketing. In the early 1990s, for instance, it shorted Oldsmobile while investing in the new Saturn brand. But later in the ’90s GM wearied heavily on an ultimately futile effort to not including Olds, and left Saturn bereft of new vehicles. And since 2001, GM has launched a $4 billion effort to rebuild Cadillac, and spent a decent chunk on some new Buicks, while Pontiac and Saab have gone without.

What’s different now is that management is acknowledging it can’t support eight brands and is focusing resources more intently without ceasing the four divisions that it thinks will be survivors. "GM can’t afford to send all eight kids to college," says Noble. "GM is better served spending a dollar on Chevrolet than it is Pontiac."