Flinty-Eyed Players at GM.(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

Driving a Cadillac CTS-V to Flint, Michigan, to act as a judge at the Kettering University Firebirds Car Club show put me in a General Motors frame of mind. Two weeks later, driving a new Pontiac GTO to Ypsilanti to judge at the Orphan Car Show put me back aboard that train of thought.

KU was named for Charles F. Kettering (aka "Boss Ket''), of course, famed as inventor of the starter motor and founder of GM's expansive Research department. His is the best possible name from GM history for a university you might recognize under its old handle of General Motors Institute, long a training ground for automotive engineers. The KU alumni-weekend car show is a once-a-year deal for the Firebirds; the students seem to prefer autocrosses, races and gatherings at the indoor go-kart track. (Their club's name, incidentally, was chosen back when a Firebird was an exotic GM concept car with a gas-turbine engine, not a Pontiac pony car.)

We parked the CTS-V near the show and drew a crowd of GM vets among the alumni, who were pleased to hear about a Caddy that runs with Euro-brand sports sedans. I gave some of them pause, though, by wondering aloud why it wasn't done with a Cadillac-exclusive drivetrain, with a character distinct from a Chevy. You might ask the same question of the GTO, or about many "shared-platform'' projects industry-wide. Kettering himself might have posed similar questions, though the CEO he worked under, Alfred P. Sloan, would have been content to see Cadillac rise in perceived stature, heedless of an Opel chassis or engine parts shared with pickup trucks.

GM founder William C. Durant came to mind at the later show. Booted out of his own conglomerate after failing to play well with others (notably Walter P. Chrysler, who had fled with a $10 million payoff in 1920, when even $1 million meant something), Durant set out to build up a rival to GM in the 1920s. Under the umbrella of Durant Motors he wedded nameplates like Locomobile, Star and Flint. By ...