QOTD: Do You Care About GM's Move?

by Tim Healey

Published: April 18th, 2024

Normally, when a large, well-known company moves its headquarters, it's pretty big news.

That's because in many cases, the company is moving across the country, or perhaps from the city to the suburbs.

However, General Motors announced a move earlier this week and it seems like it's been met with a shrug.

That's because in this case, GM is moving just a few blocks.

It's not like Boeing bouncing from Seattle to Chicago to Virginia, or even United Airlines decamping Chicago for its suburbs (or McDonald's, which moved from Chicago's suburbs to the city proper). The General is moving just a mile.

But it does mean that GM will be leaving one of the most recognizable buildings on the Detroit skyline. Not only does the Renaissance Center, uh, center the skyline when viewed from certain angles, but it's interesting inside, as well.

And for visitors, infuriating -- it's an easy building to get lost in. Also, the Marriott's heating system seemed to struggle with Michigan winters during some of my auto-show visits. So maybe the new office will be friendlier to outsiders, let alone GM corporate employees.

I guess I will miss the RenCen in some ways, but I can't bring myself to care too much otherwise. If GM left Detroit for NYC, or even for Ann Arbor, I might struggle to get my head around it. But regardless of what I think of the RenCen complex, I can't get too upset about GM moving just a 15-minute walk away.

The question I ask of you, especially those of you who live in the Detroit metro and/or have connections to GM, does this matter to you? Or is it such a small move that it doesn't really matter?

Sound off below.

[Image: GM]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.

#GM #GeneralMotors #RenCen #QOTD #QuestionOfTheDay

Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

Comments

Join the conversation

5 of 80 comments

Groza George on Apr 19, 2024

I don’t care about GM’s anything. They have not had anything of interest or of reasonable quality in a generation and now solely stay on business to provide UAW retirement while they slowly move production to Mexico.

Like Reply
- See 2 previous
- Jeff on Apr 19, 2024
  
  Years ago I worked with a career gm employee who use to refer to gm as "Generous Motors".
  
  1
- Namesakeone on Apr 20, 2024
  
  Jeff, I remember the "Generous Motors" reference as well. Those days are, as you know, long gone; I would believe that "the new GM" (or is it gm?) is generous to its senior executives and attorneys only.
  
  1
- RHD on Apr 21, 2024
  
  In my experience, GM stands for "Generally Mediocre". They have brought about their steadily shrinking market share from decades of below average quality. Not everything that GM built was bad, of course, but enough were to turn a very significant number of potential buyers to other automakers.
  
  Like
Socrates77 on Apr 20, 2024

They're pinching pennies for the investors like always, greed has turned GM into a joke of an old corporate American greed.

1 Reply

Recent Comments

Teddyc73 Even in the front it's still a trunk. Just stop already. If it was on the side would we called it a "srunk"?
Statikboy Looks-wise, it could be the next gen Soul.
SCE to AUX Here's a crazy thought - what if China decides to fully underwrite the 102.5% tariff?
3-On-The-Tree They are hard to get in and out of. I also like the fact that they are still easy to work on with the old school push rod V8. My son’s 2016 Mustang GT exhaust came loose up in Tuscon so I put a harbor freight floor jack, two jack stands, tool box and two 2x4 in the back of the vette. So agreed it has decent room in the back for a sports car.
Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh so what?? .. 7.5 billion is not even in the same hemisphere as the utterly stupid waste of money on semiconductor fabs to the tune of more than 100 billion for FABS that CANNOT COMPETE in a global economy and CANNOT MAKE THE US Independent from China or RUSSIA. we REQUIRE China for cpu grade silicon and RUSSIA/Ukraine for manufacturing NEON gas for cpus and gpus and other silicon based processors for cars, tvs, phones, cable boxes ETC... so even if we spend trillion $ .. we STILL have to ask china permission to buy the cpu grade silicon needed and then buy neon gas to process the wafers.. but we keep tossing intel/Taiwan tens of billions at a time like a bunch of idiots.Google > "mining-and-refining-pure-silicon-and-the-incredible-effort-it-takes-to-get-there" Google > "silicon production by country statista" Google > "low-on-gas-ukraine-invasion-chokes-supply-of-neon-needed-for-chipmaking"