HUMMER not a big story in GM’s big announcment

In this morning’s announcement from GM Headquarters in Detroit, CEO Rick Wagoner laid out his plan to provide 15 billion in necessary funds by the end of 2009. There were two areas discussed, both operational changes and asset sales such as brands and real estate.

Operational changes included decreasing truck capacity by another 150,000 units from their original cuts announced June 3rd. President and COO Fritz Henderson told reporters after the conference that specifics of those cuts were not being announced today, saying it would only be appropriate to tell those affected like workers and unions first. Other operational changes include slashing the motorsports/promotions budget, reducing salary costs by 20%, and delaying all next generation truck, SUV, and V8 design spending. This isn’t all surprising given older news about the next generation HUMMERs.

Wagoner continued on to the second half of his announcement about their ‘broad assessment’ of sales or modifications to its assets, but remained very vague on any details. He confirmed that HUMMER is the only brand currently under “strategic review” and the only brand currently being considered for sale, and that GM “is continuing to focus on profit improvement initiatives” across all other channels. When asked by a reporter if there was any interest in the HUMMER brand so far, Wagoner said, “Yes, we’ve received a lot of interest,” but would not elaborate at this time.

The operational changes were the big story today – with the budget being cut for motorsports, we’ll let you know what that means for Team HUMMER.