Drawing Lessons

Like silent sentries on watch, a Saturn Outlook and the GMC Acadia—both fresh from the paint shop and wearing slick coats of gleaming white—guard the front lot of General Motors' newest and most technologically advanced automotive production facility in North America. Opened last year and counting some 3,000 people on the payroll, the Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant is a complex of noise and light just off Interstate 69 outside Lansing, Mich. Under a roof that covers 300 acres of the 1,100-acre campus, workers churn these two crossover vehicles off the line in double shifts.

Starting this spring, Lansing Delta will add the Buick Enclave to its roster, completing its lineup of three CUVs. That a new, state-of-the-art facility has been devoted to this breed of wheels is not a coincidence: CUVs—built on standard car frames but affording the roominess of an SUV—represent what could be GM's big chance to get back in the game as the once-mighty company staggers away from a $10.6 billion loss in 2005. Not that GM has all its chips on one number. CUVs join the mid-sized sedan group and the pickup truck segment as the place to be in the auto industry, where marketers are scrapping to grab the consumer in all ways possible.

Accordingly, Lansing Delta is a nimble operation. If the CUV turns out to be just a flavor of the month, the plant can retool its lines to build something more popular, like a sedan. "Our days of selling 250,000 units are gone," said David Darovitz, a Buick rep. "Buick is now downsizing the number of products that it will be offering as part of the brand's strategy. We will be more focused on crossovers and sedans."

The Lansing Delta plant stands as a symbol for much that GM has learned to do differently in today's competitive climate. But the one thing the plant can't manufacture is something that GM—and, for that matter, many of its competitors—also will have to learn to do: An excellent job of marketing.

In today's auto industry, say experts, it's marketing that leads the product—not vice versa. The key segments (such as light trucks and crossovers) are now so succinctly defined and internally competitive, marketing is more critical than ever if a new model has a prayer of being noticed. The larger factor, however, is quality. The integrity of the design, engineering and materials of today's cars has increased across the board, and that's good news for buyers. The bad news is reserved for manufacturers: Quality has ceased to be the automatic differentiator it had been for decades. Simply put, "It's hard to buy a really bad car these days," explained Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. Marketing, if only by default, has been left to do the heavy lifting.

There's just one problem with that. "Car companies are not doing a good job