I think it would have been in their best interest to have a broader product line.
If they had more high MPG cars during the gasoline price spikes they could’ve ramped up production on those pretty quickly and help mitigate the losses they sustained.
As it was they had a bunch of $40,000+ SUVs that got less than 18 MPG while we had $4.00/gallon gas.
They took a major hit from that swing in consumer buying.
They have to hedge against wild price swings like that.
“I think it would have been in their best interest to have a broader product line.”
I don’t think it would have helped. There were plenty of high (32+MPG) cars on the dealers lots. The problem was that no one wanted to buy the gashog trade-in.
BTW, about the only thing that GM was making a profit on was the ‘gashogs’, those 40K+ cars. They were at best breaking even on the high mileage cars.
So you were faced with tightening credit, reduced trade-in value, and an inability of the dealers to lower prices on their high mileage/low profit margin vehicles.
A different mix of models on the show room would not have affected any of that.