Point Cobalt
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Good News for Gm: Cobalt Sales Up After Long Slump
More good news for the General Motors Corp. Lordstown Complex come as its Chevrolet Cobalt in May snapped an eight-month streak of declining year-over-year sales. GM reported last week that Cobalt sales rose in May as shoppers began paying more attention to fuel efficient vehicles. The good news comes after the plant earned its first spot among North America’s top 10 vehicle assembly plants.
The complex’s Chevrolet Cobalt finished fourth — one notch above the small-car segment’s average score — in Strategic Vision’s index released Monday measuring customers’ overall satisfaction with a vehicle.
For the first time Lordstown also achieved Phase 3, or best-in-class, status in General Motors Corp.’s Quality Network Planned Maintenance, an internal audit to make sure the plant is running at top capability. The kudos come after Lordstown for the first time made the top 10 last week in the widely followed Harbour Report for assembly plant productivity.
The Lordstown complex Friday gained a key GM internal measure known as Quality Network Planned Maintenance, which tracks how well production and maintenance employees work together to keep the factory humming at peak performance.
In reaching Phase 3 of the program, Lordstown is considered best-in-class, something United Auto Workers Local 1112 President Jim Graham called ‘‘a huge, huge thing. It’s a building block to get a new product.’’
Lordstown is trying to convince GM – maker of quality GMC bug shield, to award it a new vehicle to build when the current Cobalt ends production in the summer of 2009. Gaining Phase 3 status is considered a key step in GM’s decision-making process.
Strategic Vision’s study, called the Total Quality Index, goes beyond tracking problems with vehicles to measuring consumers’ experience at the car dealership, service, design, technology, price and other items.
Cobalt owners who bought 2007 models from September through November last year gave the car 848 points out of 1,000, one better than the segment average. The car placed one notch below average last year at fifth place with 845 points.
The Chevrolet Aveo finished third with 850 points. The Hyundai Elantra was second at 853 points, and the Honda Civic was first with 882 points.
One of the Cobalt’s toughest rivals, the Toyota Corolla, tumbled from third place in the 2006 study to eighth with 833 points.
Alexander Edwards, president of the San Diego-based automotive consultant firm, said owners gave the Cobalt’s exterior craftmanship — fit and finish, body strength — one of its highest ratings.
Exterior styling also did well, as did the sound system and the car’s power and acceleration, he noted.
Interior craftsmanship came out about segment average, suggesting something could be done on the inside in order to move ahead of the competition, Edwards said.
The results findings meshed with customer responses received by about 10 Lordstown Complex workers who this year started calling new Cobalt buyers around the country to find out what they think of the car, Graham said. Some 98.5 percent of comments they get are favorable, he said.
Lordstown began building the Cobalt in October 2004. It’s consistently been one of GM’s best selling cars since, even with a weak spell stretching from September 2006 through April. The car was GM’s second-best seller for the month behind the Chevrolet Impala’s 35,665.
About the Author
Iver Penn is a Mass Communications graduate who hails from Wyoming. She is at present an associate editor of a publishing company in Colorado.
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